Viewing Log:
The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013): The year is 1921. Polish immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotillard) arrives at Ellis Island with her sister. The sister is taken to an infirmary because of a cough, and we later learn that she has tuberculosis. Officials want to deny Ewa entry into the country because she's an unaccompanied woman without any male citizen there to take charge of her, but instead a seemingly sympathetic bureaucrat sneaks her off with Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), an owner of a vaudeville theater. Bruno tells Ewa that he can get her sister out, but it'll take a lot of money. She wants to ply her former trade of nursing, but Bruno gives her a low wage position as a seamstress. He soon coerces Ewa into appearing on stage (clothed) in a topless burlesque performance, and ultimately prostitution. The Catholic Ewa hates herself for this, but finds a possible source of hope in the form of illusionist Orlando (Jeremy Renner). I have mixed feelings about this one. Director James Gray does a meticulous job bringing 1920s Brooklyn to life, but the performances by Phoenix and Renner seem uncharacteristically flat and unbelievable. The melodrama of the film also feels forced. I recommend giving it a pass.
The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012): On December 26, 2004 an earthquake triggered tsunami hit the coastline of much of southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. Over 300,000 people--mostly native Asian--died in the natural disaster, but you'd never know that watching J.A. Bayona's film. Instead, you'd think that it primarily effected posh white people who sought an "exotic" Christmas experience. The very British Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (Ewan McGregor) travel to Thailand with their three sons, including an impossibly young Tom Holland as Lucas. They're having fun poolside when the tidal wave comes in, sweeping the family apart. The film first focuses on Maria and Lucas as they're swept out to the coast line and very nearly drown. Improbably, they wind up together and battle their way back inland. Halfway through we learn that Henry and the two younger boys remained behind at their resort, as the father goes through a mad search for the rest of his family. Through it all native Thais are either pushed to the background (I don't remember seeing any in the disaster footage or as patients in hospitals--everyone there was white) or are presented as saviors there to take care of the white folk. Yes, what the family went through was horrific, but the decision to tell a story about a group of affluent Europeans who get their happy ending when so many others of Asian descent did not, strikes me as kind of racist. We're even told that this is based on a true story, but the afterward gives us a family portrait with the family's real names, and they are obviously Hispanic! The studio felt that the original story was not white enough! Look, it's a competently made film even with its cheesy dialogue, but it’s also one that betrays its colonial ideology throughout. If you're a fan of racist disaster porn, then this is the movie for you.
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016): Terrence Davies is a filmmaker deeply invested in a certain time and place. Nearly all of his films are set in WWII era-London, which, uncoincidentally, is where he grew up. It's telling that the only times he stepped outside of this--the NYC based
The House of Mirth and turn of the century Scotland in
Sunset Song--are both literary adaptations. Sticking with these literally themes, Davies gives us a biopic of Emily Dickinson instead of an adaption of any particular work in
A Quiet Passion. When the film opens, we get the first inclinations of Dickinson's iconoclasm when the teenager (played by Emma Bell) bucks her preparatory school instructor's exercise on salvation. The young Emily comes off as a proto-feminist in her rejection of the day's mores, but much of this seems to have been worn away by the time we get to see her as an adult (played by Cynthia Nixon) who portrays the poet as more world worn. Both actresses do fantastic jobs in their roles, but the real star of the film is Davies's screenplay which features some of the sharpest dialogue I've heard in a good long while.
The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012): When Wayne Blair's film opens, he treats us to an obligatory montage of the social upheaval going on in Australian and abroad during the late 1960s. The only thing that separates this from the countless other films that have done it is that it features dulcet a cappella harmonizing instead CCR's "Fortunate Song" or another rock anthem of the day. When the film proper begins, we meet a trio of Aboriginal sisters--Gail (Deborah Mailman), Julie (Jessica Nauboy), and Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell)--who just wanna sing American country and western tunes over the objection of their over protective mother. During a competition in front of an all-white audience, the girls sing a Merle Haggard song that fails to attract anyone's attention aside from Dave (Chris O’Dowd), a British talent scout that just happens to be at this tiny battle of the bands in the middle of nowhere. He promises the girls that he can get them a dream gig if they only switch over to R&B and learn some dance moves. They give up their whole identity at the advice of a strange white man, and are rewarded with a USO tour entertaining the troops in Vietnam. There they are joined by their biracial cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens), who is a member of Australia's Stolen Generation. This could have been used to make an incisive comment about race, but nope. Instead, it's just glossed over in favor of depictions of the Vietnam War that break no new ground, and performances of songs we've heard countless times. For a film that's ostensibly about race, there's very little analysis of it here. There's an interracial romance, and a character that uses the n-word, and that's about it. The members of the band aren't even fleshed out people. They're given one identifying character trait and spend the film repeating it in two dimensional performances. This film was on my to-see-list because someone (I can't find the individual ballots right now) voted this as one of the 10 best films ever made in 2012's
Sight & Sound poll. What the actual fuck?
Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015): In 2010 the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Iran handed down a sentence against Jafar Panahi that forbid him from making any films until the year 2030. Despite the ban, Panahi has found enough wiggle room to make the 2011 documentary
This is Not a Film and 2012's
Closed Curtains. He completed this exile triptych with the deceptive faux documentary (I thought it was an actual documentary with the first fare, and didn't realize that it was staged until the second passenger gave away the game)
Taxi. The conceit of the film is simple. If the Iranian government won't allow Panahi to officially make films, then he'll document a day of himself driving a taxi around the streets of Tehran. Told with a dash cam that records everyone in the cab, there are a number of memorable passengers. Gender politics hangs over much of the film. A grievously wounded man wants to record his last will and testament on a smartphone or else his property will go to his closest male relative instead of his wife; a pair of women need to rush to a meeting that Panahi doesn't know the way to when they're not allowed to drive himself. His young niece, which makes up much of the film's final act, highlights the absurdity of the position that Panahi finds himself in. She's assigned to make a film for her elementary school, but is hampered by ridiculous rules to keep it in line with the official state views. I'm a huge fan of Panahi's work, and I'm happy to say that this one stands up well with the rest of his films. It's a daring experiment made in the face of state oppression, and it's really good to boot.
Their Finest (Lone Scherfig, 2016): Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) wants to help out with the war effort, but is hampered by her failed artist husband Ellis's (Jack Huston) inability to bring in a livable income. The solution seems to come when she's hired by the UK film board to work as a script doctor, making men written dialogue of women characters believable. She soon finds herself with a banger of an idea for a war film, when a pair of twins tell her about their experience rescuing soldiers from Dunkirk. After fighting for it, her project is green lighted, but she finds her vision constantly undercut by committee. Most of the movie is about the production of the film, but there's plenty of time for the obligatory romance as her marriage to Ellis collapses and she finds herself attracted to fellow screenwriter. The shooting of the movie within a movie is unoffensive wartime reminiscing, but the gender dynamics of Catrin as the only woman in a man's world (with the exception of higher up Phyl (Rachael Stirling)) are far more interesting. Fortunately, the movie divides its time between these two aspects. It's not a great film, but it’s a decent way to spend two hours.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Susan Johnson, 2018): Adapting the first of Jenny Han’s semi-autobiographical young adult romance trilogy, Susan Johnson's
To All the Boys I've Loved Before became a minor cultural phenomenon. Just as many of the films released by Netflix become the talk of the water cooler for a couple of weeks, discussion of this teenage rom-com was everywhere in the late summer of 2018. After finally catching up with it, I wish I hadn't. The film follows the exploits of Lara Jean (Lana Condor) a suburban girl with a Korean-American mom and white dad. She's the middle child in a trio of sisters, and jealous of the attention that her older, college bound, sis gets with the boys. Unlucky in love, the 16-year-old has written notes to the five boys she's had crushes on thus far in her life, but never sent any of them out. One day the letters leak, and in order to avoid the embarrassment of the one sent to her sister's ex, she suddenly kisses a different ex-crush that was standing near her: Peter (Noah Centineo). Peter has just come off of a relationship with Lara Jean's junior high ex-BFF turned mean girl, but the two agree to start fake dating each other to avoid the drama of other romances. In case you didn't know romcom conventions, this is a surefire way for them to fall madly in love, and that's exactly what happens.
Misunderstandings from a school ski trip leads to a temporary breakup before every character reveals their hidden emotions and all is well again. I don't know why I put this in spoiler text since anyone familiar with the genre could see it coming from a mile away.
The film follows teenage romcom conventions to a fault. No new ground is broken here. It could be forgivable if the film at least did something right, but the writing comes off as a bad John Hughes imitation. This is two strikes against it since John Hughes was bad to begin with! I suppose that the characters are likeable enough, but they're also romcom stereotypes trapped in a prison of the genre's own making. Unable to deviate from their prescribed actions that the film comes off as an exercise in fatalism. I'm sorry, but I don't get the critical praise of the movie. It felt like it was in the same league as a made-for-TV movie my tween son would watch on the Disney Channel. I did, however, appreciate two things. First, there was the scene where they called out the racism of
Sixteen Candle's racist Asian character Long Duk Dong (an allusion to the film's debt to Hughes). Of course, it
immediately undercuts this by making a joke about how the girls will excuse the anti-Asian depiction because Jake Ryan is totally hot. Second, I appreciated how Lara Jean's dad (played by John "here the Hell Have I Been" Corbett) encourages his daughter to practice safe sex and gives her an envelope of condoms. Good. That's what a parent of teenagers should do. When Lara Jean told her BFF that she came prepared for a good time when they were at the ski lodge, she reached into her backpack. I fully expected her to pull out the condoms, but was let down when it was a pair of romance novels. Sad. In a better, less saccharine movie it would been the condoms.