SOME FILMS I SAW THIS MONTH: Volume 12 – “Black Swan”, “The Kids Are All Right”, “Youth in Revolt” and 12 others…
This month: “Barcelona”, “Black Swan”, “Cléo de 5 à 7”, “Cyrus”, “Easy A”, “Ella Enchanted”, “Holiday in Handcuffs”, “The Kids are All Right”, “Me and Orson Welles”, “The Palm Beach Story”, “Somers Town”, “Somewhere”, “You Can Count on Me”, “Young Frankenstein” and “Youth in Revolt”.
This month, the average rating is 5.81/10, and the film of the month is “Black Swan”. Trivia: black swans are strictly monogamous.
Barcelona (1994) – 5/10
In Barcelona, there is a rich and beautiful culture to explore. In Barcelona, you wonder why you look better in mirrors than in real life, but take ninety minutes to explain why.
Black Swan (2010) – 8.5/10
It is the opening night of Swan Lake. Natalie Portman is having a mental breakdown backstage. A man dressed as Von Rothbort, an evil bird monster, brushes past and says, “Hey.”
Black Swan is an intense experience. It follows Natalie Portman’s psychological torment and pressure from undertaking the lead role in Swan Lake, which already has its own deranged story line. The lights, sounds and effects aren’t subtle, and the over-the-top cinematography creates a splendid nightmare – I kept squirming in my seat, and was surprised by the amount of nervous laughter it strangled out of me. I even missed chunks because I had to look away out of sheer terror. I imagine this is why so many people dislike seeing ballet, right?
I also find it unfathomable that Natalie Portman has finally become a talented actress. I never saw it coming. I hope she feels deep, deep self-loathing from re-watching Garden State. Her role in Black Swan reflects her acting career in that she is cast in the lead of Swan Lake despite a reputation as a medicocre, but reliable, ballerina – she has to prove that she can act the role of ‘the black swan’ and demonstrate a dark side. In other words, she can’t re-enact the vomit-inducing puppy-dog loving, Shins-promoting, stuffed-toy and stuffed-Zach-Braff-loving role of Garden State. And she does a fairly decent job, although most of the admiration goes towards her commitment and dancing, rather than acting – the casting juxtaposition ironically proves why she will never be the next Winona Ryder.
Black Swan is such an intense experience, you could even say that it takes off 107 minutes off your life just by watching it. It’s as if the director, Darren Aronofsky, found a dial on the film labelled Polanski, then turned it up to 11. And then Von Rothbort walks past and says, “Hey.”
Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) – 7.5/10
In Cléo de 5 à 7, Cléo, a singer, awaits cancer test results from a doctor. In the meantime, she makes a spiritual journey simply by walking through the city and looking at things for a few more seconds. Hey, that man is eating a frog – could that affect my existential crisis?
Cléo insists that as long as she’s beautiful, then she’s alive. This is almost proven by the horrible gremlin creature running around one of the flats. I thought it was a CGI-created monster, but eventually identified it as an ugly kitten. It might as well have been dead.
And then Cléo leaves the building, expecting to die in a vibrant environment – Paris, 1962, where the air is so serendipitous that death can only be the next stage.
Cyrus (2010) – 4/10
This is a reason to never get married. Because once you do, you can never leave. And what would happen then? You end up like John C. Reilly’s character in Cyrus. I don’t particularly like watching him, but I would hate to be him. He’s in Hollywood without charm, wit or looks. So he has luck. That means if you morph into John C. Reilly, then you have no positive attributes apart from luck. But I’m so unlucky that I would probably be the only unlucky John C. Reilly in the universe. He makes his co-star Jonah Hill seem like Johan Bill, the fictional explorer I invented for this review. This is what watching John C. Reilly in a lead role has made me do. I also need to know who in their right mind would give $7,000,000 to the Duplass brothers to make a film? They don’t need that much. They don’t deserve that much. All they do with it is make decisions like make a terrible film called Cyrus or cast John C. Reilly in the lead. Are the Duplass brothers trying to make a point to the film industry – a bigger budget doesn’t mean a film will be any better? Maybe they’re also trying to prove that a bad film will still be bad with John C. Reilly because that’s not how the phrase ‘two wrongs make a right’ actually works.
But, okay, that’s more John C. Reilly than I can stand… which is my one sentence review of Cyrus.
Easy A (2010) – 7.5/10
Easy A is a witty high-school comedy that loosely riffs on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1859 novel The Scarlett Letters. The script is smart and comments on the teen film clichés it wishes to avoid, and which John Hughes traditions should be kept alive.
Ella Enchanted (2004) – 3/10
Under Judd Apatow, this would have been a very different film. A beautiful princess who is under a magic spell that means she has to obey every order given to her. Someone should have told her to stop production.
Holiday in Handcuffs (2007) – 5.5/10
Holiday in Handcuffs brings together two important figures from my childhood: Mario Lopez (Saved by the Bell) and Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa Explains it All).
It’s a few days before Christmas and Melissa Joan Hart is excited about her family meeting her boyfriend for the first time, but he dumps her at the cafe she works at. Uh oh! Meanwhile, Mario Lopez slips on some ice and ends up losing consciousness. Melissa takes advantage of the situation by taking him into her car and tying him up. Mario wakes up to find that he’s been kidnapped and being instructed that he must pretend to be the boyfriend of a complete stranger.
When Melissa and Mario reach the family house, he immediately tells the family that he’s been kidnapped and must find a way to get home. The family laugh and assume he’s joking. HE THEN GIVES UP. JUST LIKE THAT. He later finds a phone. He calls a friend to apologise for missing a meeting. HE DOESN’T PHONE THE POLICE. How could he get revenge? He could be an embarrassing boyfriend, perhaps. Or he could concentrate on escaping. For instance, he could run away in the night. Or run away in the day. Or run away any single moment. Instead, he DECIDES TO BOND WITH HER FAMILY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, so that they prefer him to her. YES, HE BELIEVES THAT ENFORCING A FEELING OF SLIGHT INFERIORITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREEDOM OR CALLING THE POLICE.
But, apart from that, it’s okay and mildly amusing.
The Kids Are All Right (2010) – 6.5/10
There is a lot of promise in The Kids Are All Right, with a talented cast and an intriguing concept. Two children of a lesbian couple are curious about their biological father, so track down the sperm donor, who turns out to be a laid-back Californian with an interest in settling down. However, the film fails to maintain any momentum, and becomes a contrived and predictable drama.
There is a potential goldmine in examining the father’s casual relationship with his sudden family, but instead the viewer is shown tired comic set-ups, such as someone accidentally turning pornography on full volume, and the sitcom cliché of parents thinking their son might be gay after a few misunderstandings.
Also, the kids may be all right, but one of them looks a bit too much like Gwyneth Paltrow.
Me and Orson Welles (2009) – 7.5/10
Do you remember New York in 1937? Well, do you remember the last time you saw a film that featured New York in 1937? Me and Orson Welles is a wonderful coming-of-age period drama that is in awe of the sparkling world of theatre. The narrative follows Zac Efron, a schoolboy accused of romanticising everything, as he plays a small role in a production of Julius Caesar, helmed by Orson Welles. It’s a horrible play – I studied it at school, then later at university – but Richard Linklater provides a warm and fuzzy camera lens. I watched it on Boxing Day by a radiator, eating soup, forgetting how much I want to die.
The Palm Beach Story (1942) – 5.5/10
The Palm Beach Story is the third Preston Sturges film I’ve seen, and the third to involve mistaken identities. However, it is much simpler than that, even though it revolves around a man’s struggles to find financing for an airport that exists on wires above a city.
Unlike The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels, there is very little to hold on to. The scenes meander aimlessly and characters are often indistinguishable. With this Palm Beach, you probably had to be there to enjoy it.
Somers Town (2008) – 4/10
Shane Meadows goes to great lengths to show us the lives of insignificant teenagers in Somers Town, a small part of London where everyone is auditioning for a role in a Ken Loach film. I suppose it’s a coming-of-age drama, but it’s also an oh-God-why-won’t-this-film-end-I-don’t-care-about-these-characters drama.
Somewhere (2010) – 0/10
In the opening scene, a film star drives a sports car around an empty track, in circles, over and over again. For three minutes. The symbolism is so aggressive, it’s offensive.
I think Anywhere would be better than this. The magnificence of Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides, two of Sofia Coppola’s previous films, is gone. What is left – a man sitting on a sofa, looking at fruit and smoking a cigarette for a few minutes. Two second transitional scenes take about ten minutes in Somewhere. It’s lazier than Garfield – lazier than both the character and the franchise.
You Can Count on Me (2000) – 8.5/10
“Oh, fine – why don’t you just take over the whole bank?”
Laura Linney plays a single mother in You Can Count on Me, an intelligent drama about family and the ‘psychological bullshit’ of the church. After her parents died when she was child, she never leaves the village. In fact, she still lives in her family home, single-handedly raising Rory Culkin. Hooray for Rory Culkin. And then her unreliable brother, Mark Ruffalo, stops by for a visit. Hooray for Mark Ruffalo.
Mark Ruffalo is magnificent. Even when he sits in the bath, he makes it a heavy scene – the way he’s sitting in the water, reflecting on the dramas of his life, his flailing relationship with his sister and her son, his recent stint in prison, his financial worries, and why he chose a tub instead of a shower.
Young Frankenstein (1974) – 7.5/10
Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder team up to form a daft and ridiculous black-and-white spoof of Frankenstein. Gene Wilder plays Dr Frankenstein, a man booed and hissed at by the science community after memories of his ancestors. In the role of a reluctant mad scientist, Wilder portrays the maddest scientist possible, shrieking hysterically and punning crazily. Walk this way…
Youth in Revolt (2009) – 5.5/10
It takes literally a few seconds to realise that Youth in Revolt is yet another film about Michael Cera trying to lose his virginity – the opening scene lays outs its cards, knowing how sick you are of metaphorical poker. Luckily, there is a twist as Cera also plays François Dilinger, the evil version of himself that exists only in his imagination. Sometimes they take turns on screen, and sometimes they appear next to each other. It’s stupid fun – you get to see Cera with a moustache, smoking a cigarette and dispensing bad advice.
Sadly, François Dilinger isn’t enough to hide that Youth in Revolt is a contrived coming-of-age story that has a smug voice-over and little authenticity. The plot is so far-fetched, it is easier following Hansel and Gretal after the birds have had their picnic. By the time Cera successfully disguises himself as a woman when he escapes from being arrested by the police for arson, I’m no longer surprised.
