Good Films

A while back I was recommending a movie to a friend, and after explaining all the movie’s merits—why it is unique and interesting and why he should see it, I remarked as a disclaimer, “Nothing really happens in it, though.” To which he replied, “It seems like that ‘happens’ in a lot of your movies.” So I guess you’ve been warned, although I think the following have enough happenings to be interesting to most.

Into the Wild
From the opening credits, hints of vintageness give this film a semi-timeless feel to it (even though it takes place in the early 90’s), which make sense since the main character / subject matter draws on authors ranging from Jack London to Thoreau to Tolstoy for guidance. Some of the events that have been put together by a lot of in depth research in Krakauer’s book are fictionalized, but Sean Penn does the novel—and the larger-than-life story of John McCandless—justice, when the risk is creating something that is riddled with clichéd idealism. This film successfully avoids these pitfalls, while instead creating a tale that is moving. Emile Hirsch is a very good actor, which becomes very important since McCandless spends a lot of his time on his own, convinced that people are wrong “to think that Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships.” But I think anyone that saw either The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys or that SoCal skateboarding movie already knew that Hirsch can act. Into the Wild is now playing at an independent theare near you.

Children of Men
A dystopian drama that feels like a documentary, not just because it is shot like one, but because the future—2027—is eerily similar to the present and immediate past. The Waste Land is England, and even T.S. Eliot would be proud of what Alfonso Cuaron (of Y Tu Mama Tambien fame) created. Hoberman’s review of the movie for the Village Voice is solid, and even adds a twist of conspiracy to the film’s limited marketing and release, as well as the critical reception to the project.

Mutual Appreciation
Who says you need color film and professional actors to make the best film of the 2006? Indie-pop musician Justin Rice stars as his alter-ego in this honest and realistically awkward, slice-of-life masterpiece. Writer, director and actor Andrew Bujalski made this film with very few trained actors, as he did with his first film, Funny Ha Ha. In fact, it seems he instead likes to use musicians, specifically his friends from the Brooklyn based band Bishop Allen—he cast each of them as the lead role in his two films.

The new awful and proliferating buzzword is “Mumble-core,” which is stupid and makes little sense. Well, the “mumble” part makes sense, since we sometimes mumble when we speak in real life, but to quote a recent email of a friend:

I get the ‘mumble,’ but why the ‘core’? Why is ‘core’ such a popular suffix these days? It’s the ‘post’ of suffixes– you can put ‘post’ before anything and make it sound contemporary and cool. This is my post-salami sandwich. It’s going to be delicious-core.

It turns out that recent articles have been lumping a lot of the films I have been recklessly championing the past couple years into a list of required “mumble-core” viewing, although I disagree about some of the ideas about their influences, and I prefer to label the genre “Not-much-happens-ism.” But this is no way for young, struggling, experimental filmmakers to market themselves, especially when they readily admit that their staunch do-it-yourself tactics are “completely unsustainable.”

You’d better dust off your Spanish for:

Pan’s Labyrinth
Horrifically violent and visually spectacular, this brutal story, billed as a “fairytale for adults,” evokes the concept of dreams contaminated by reality (instead of the other way around), with a true labyrinth at the “center” of this narrative. It takes place during the final stages of the Spanish Civil War, with Fascists looking for blood, and revolutionaries grasping to hold onto the freedom that they have already sacrificed so much to obtain.

Volver
Almodovar’s most recent creation is one of his best, and a much needed sigh of relief from his previous film, the powerful and haunting Mala Educacion. Volver is so good, and so Spanish: fantasmas, La Mancha (of Quixote fame), blood sausage, one-person elevators, lots of talking, and Penelope Cruz reminding us of why she is famous. And, as always, you can expect some classic Almodovian narrative twists.