Review: "PULP FICTION" is Still a Wild Child

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 23 of 2024 (No. 1967) by Leroy Douresseaux

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Running time:  154 minutes (2 hours, 34 minutes)

MPAA – R for strong graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language and some sexuality

DIRECTOR:  Quentin Tarantino

WRITERS:  Quentin Tarantino; from stories by Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino

PRODUCER:  Lawrence Bender

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Andrzej Sekula

EDITOR:  Sally Menke

Academy Award winner

CRIME/DRAMA

Starring:  John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Phil LaMarr, Frank Whaley, Paul Calderon, Bronagh Gallagher, Rosanna Arquette, Eric Stoltz, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Walken, and Harvey Keitel

Pulp Fiction is a 1994 crime film from writer-director Quentin Tarantino.  The film follows the lives of an ensemble of characters, including two mob hit men, a boxer, a pair of armed robbers, and a gangster and his wife in a series of intertwined tales of violence and redemption.

Thirty years ago, this month, May 1994, brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the then co-chairmen of Miramax Films, blew into France with the entire cast of Pulp Fiction for the 47th Cannes Film Festival.  On or about May 21, 1994, the Weinsteins unveiled Pulp Fiction at a midnight screening.  From what I read lo those many years ago, that screening cause a sensation.  Pulp Fiction would go on to win the festival's top prize, the “Palme d'Or,” for Tarantino.

I had been putting off seeing Pulp Fiction during its initial release, but it was re-released in the spring of 1995 in the run-up to the 67th Academy Awards (March 27, 1995).  Pulp Fiction had been nominated for seven Oscars.  A friend encourage me to see it with her, which I think we did a week or so before the Oscars.  I'd seen Reservoir Dogs (1992), which I considered to be an exceptional film of that time, but even the uncommon nature of Reservoir Dogs did not prepare me for the demented nature of the audacious art that was (and still is) Pulp Fiction.  In preparation for this film, I recently rewatched Tarantino's other early films, Jackie Brown (1997) and Reservoir Dogs.

Told out of chronological order, Pulp Fiction is set in and around Los Angeles.  It opens in a diner, where a couple, Pumpkin/Ringo (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny/Yolanda (Amanda Plummer), decide to pull of an armed robbery. Elsewhere, two hit men, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), seek to retrieve a brief case that belongs to their employer, crime boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), from a small group of thieves who tried to double-cross Wallace.

Later, Vega takes Wallace's wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), out to dinner – by request of Marsellus.  They banter.  They dance.  They deal with an overdose.  Also, a palooka boxer, Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), double-crosses Marsellus.  Now, he's on the run, but before the night is done, Butch and Marsellus will find themselves delivered into evil.  Finally, Jules meets Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

Reservoir Dogs is “neo-noir,” which is a modern versions of “Film-Noir,” a term that refers to the stylized Hollywood dramas – especially crime dramas – covering a period from the 1930s to the 1960s.  So if Reservoir Dogs is “neo-noir,” Pulp Fiction recalls another vintage American genre of fiction, the storytelling of the pulp magazines and hard-boiled crime novels of the mid-20th century.  Tarantino grabs the lurid, exploitative, and sensational, and also the violence and corruption that were featured in some pulps and crime novels and grafts that onto Pulp Fiction's non-linear narrative tale of people living, working, cheating, screwing, and killing in the criminal underground of L.A.

Three decades later, I find that some of the film has not aged will, such as the opening scene at the diner and the early parts of the misadventures of Vincent and Jules.  The rest of the film still sparkles with cinematic magic, as Tarantino delights in the myriad elements of both American pop culture and international cinema that he borrows (or steals) for this film.  I will say that this film's last act – the diner scene featuring Vincent & Jules and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny – is what keeps Pulp Fiction in place as one of the best films of the 1990s.  If I can divide films into increments of a quarter-hour or so, I'd say that Pulp Fiction's last 17 minutes before the end credits form the one of the best sequences of film that I have ever seen.

Seeing it again, I was frozen in place, mesmerized, and riveted by the power of this moment in American cinema.  Honestly, Samuel L. Jackson,who was nominated for a “Best Supporting Actor” Oscar for his work in this film, should have won the award based solely on his performance in this last act of Pulp Fiction.  And I say that even as I believe that the actor who did win, the late Martin Landau for Tim Burton's Ed Wood, was deserving of the Oscar.

Back in 1994, at the moment Dick Dale & His Del-Tones' 1962 surf rock anthem, “Misirlou,” blasts across the film's soundtrack, Pulp Fiction injected some much needed juice and venom into American cinema, even if some rejected that injection at the time.  Someone once described Pulp Fiction as a “succulent guilty pleasure.”  I'll still suck on it, and I won't feel guilty about its pleasures.

10 of 10

Saturday, May 25, 2024

NOTES:

1995 Academy Awards, USA:  1 win: “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” (Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary); six nominations: “Best Picture” (Lawrence Bender), “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (John Travolta), “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Samuel L. Jackson), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Uma Thurman), “Best Director” (Quentin Tarantino), and “Best Film Editing” (Sally Menke)

1995 BAFTA Awards:  2 wins: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Samuel L. Jackson) and “Best Screenplay – Original” (Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary); 7 nominations: “Best Film” (Lawrence Bender), “Best Actor” (John Travolta), “Best Actress” (Uma Thurman), “Best Cinematography” (Andrzej Sekula) “David Lean Award for Direction” (Quentin Tarantino), “Best Editing” (Sally Menke), and “Best Sound” (Stephen Hunter Flick, Ken King, Rick Ash, and Dean A. Zupancic)

1995 Golden Globes, USA:  1 win: “Best Screenplay-Motion Picture: (Quentin Tarantino); 5 nominations: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Director - Motion Picture” (Quentin Tarantino), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama” (John Travolta), “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture” (Uma Thurman), and “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture” (Samuel L. Jackson)

1994 Cannes Film Festival:  1 win: “Palme d'Or” (Quentin Tarantino)

2013 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

The text is copyright © 2024 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint or syndication rights and fees.

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Review: Entertaining "TRIANGLE OF SADNESS" is Not as Clever or as Sharp As it Thinks It Is

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 21 of 2023 (No. 1910) by Leroy Douresseaux

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Running time:  147 minutes (2 hour, 27 minutes)

MPA – R for language and some sexual content

WRITER/DIRECTOR:  Rubin Östlund

PRODUCERS:  Philippe Bober and Erik Hemmendorff

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Fredrik Wenzel (D.o.P.)

EDITORS:  Mikel Cee Karlsson and Rubin Östlund

Academy Award nominee

DRAMA

Starring:  Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Vicki Berlin, Dolly De Leon, Zlatko Buric, Sunnyi Melles, Iris Berben, Amanda Walker, Oliver Ford Davies, Ralph Schicha, Henrik Dorsin, Jean-Christophe Folly, Alicia Eriksson, and Woody Harrelson

Triangle of Sadness is a 2022 satirical film and black comedy from writer-director Ruben Östlund.  It is the Swedish Östlund's first English-language film, and it is an international co-production between four nations:  Sweden, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.  The film follows a celebrity couple, who are both fashion models, as they join a doomed luxury cruse for the super-rich.

Triangle of Sadness introduces Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean).  Yaya is a successful fashion model, and Carl is male model, who is not as successful as Yaya.  Yaya expects Carl to pay for their meals, although she makes more money than him, and her ambition is to be a trophy wife.  Yaya is an “influencer,” and she is in a relationship with Carl for the social media engagement it earns them.

Carl and Yaya are invited on a luxury cruise aboard a super-yacht in exchange for its social media promotion.  Among the wealthy guests are the Russian oligarch, Dimitry (Zlatko Buric), and his wife, Vera (Sunnyi Melles), and Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin), a lonely tech millionaire who flirts with Yaya.  Paula (Vicki Berlin), the tightly wound head of the ship's staff, demands that the staff obey the guests' every request, even the absurd ones.  The ship's Captain (Woody Harrelson) will not leave his room and seems to be drunk all the time.  The captain's neglect of his duties, Paula's insistence on placating the super-wealthy guests, and the guests crazy demands culminate in a single disastrous evening.

Eventually, a small group of the yacht's guests, including Carl and Yaya, find themselves on what seems to be a deserted island.  Now, the balance of power has shifted from the wealthy and powerful to a rather skillful cleaning woman, Abigail (Dolly De Leon).  Will the guests adjust to this new status, and how well will they adjust?

There are some fun, outrageous, and outrageously funny material, moments, and scenes in Triangle of Sadness.  The film critiques and mocks the obscenely wealthy, but I think that its strongest points are made when it takes swipes at how some people get rich and famous.  Some are wealthy because they sell things that are destructive to humanity (things used in war), and some are rich and famous … for being rich and famous.  Some people's wealth does not make their lives better, such as the lonely Jarmo.  Some, like the Russian, Dimitry, merely happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right stuff to sell.

For all his film's political commentary and moral lessons, writer-director Ruben Östlund seems to be a tad too mannered.  It's as if he doesn't know that while his film is edgy, he seems to be dulling the sharp edges that would really go after his social and political targets.  Is Östlund saying that the super-rich and famous are obscene and that they need to be brought down to the level of ordinary people in order to regain their humanity?  By the end of the film, it seems that way.

I would recommend Triangle of Sadness (which takes its title from a modeling term used in the film) to fans of foreign movies.  Most movie fans can get a similar message, more or less, from the classic Eddie Murphy-Dan Aykroyd film, Trading Places (1983).  I like Triangle of Sadness because it is a genuinely good film, but it feels like Ruben Östlund left the hardness of its allegories and metaphors on the cutting room floor.

7 of 10

A-

★★★½ out of 4 stars

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

NOTES:

2023 Academy Awards, USA:  3 nominations: “Best Motion Picture of the Year” (Erik Hemmendorff and Philippe Bober), “Best Original Screenplay” (Ruben Östlund), and “Best Achievement in Directing” (Ruben Östlund)

2023 BAFTA Awards:  3 nominations: “Best Supporting Actress” (Dolly De Leon), “Best Casting” (Pauline Hansson), and “Best Screenplay-Original” (Ruben Östlund)

2023 Golden Globes, USA:  2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” and “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture” (Dolly De Leon) 

2022 Cannes Film Festival:  2 wins: “Palme d'Or” (Ruben Östlund) and “CST Artist-Technician Prize” (Andreas Franck, Bent Holm, Jacob Ilgner, and Jonas Rudels)

The text is copyright © 2023 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved.  Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: "The Tin Drum" is a Masterpiece (Remembering Maurice Jarre)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 118 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Die Blechtrommel (1979)
The Tin Drum (1980) – U.S. release
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  West Germany
Running time:  142 minutes (2 hours, 22 minutes)
MPAA – R
DIRECTOR:  Volker Schlöndorff
WRITERS:  Jean-Claude Carrière, Franz Seitz, and Volker Schlöndorff, with Günter Grass providing additional dialogue (based upon the novel by Günter Grass)
PRODUCER:  Franz Seitz
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Igor Luther
EDITOR:  Suzanne Baron
COMPOSER:  Maurice Jarre
Academy Award winner

DRAMA

Starring:  David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski, Tina Engel, Berta Drews, Roland Teubner, Tadeusz Kunikowki, and Heinz Bennent

The subject of this movie review is The Tin Drum (original title: Die Blechtrommel), a 1979 West German drama and black comedy from director Volker Schlöndorff.  The film is an adaptation of the 1959 novel, The Tin Drum, written by author, Günter Grass, which is the first book in Grass’ Danzig Trilogy.  The Tin Drum the movie follows a most unusual boy who, on his third birthday, decides not to grow up.

The 1979 West German film Die Blechtrommel won the 1980 Academy Award for “Best Foreign Language Film.”  It is the story of Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), a young boy in 1930’s Danzig, Germany who decides to stop growing at the age of three.  Oskar carries a small tin drum around his neck that he beats often, much to the chagrin of the adults, and Oskar has the unique physical gift of being able to scream at such a high pitch that he can break glass.

Although Oskar’s body stops growing, mentally and psychologically he keeps aging, and as he grows he witnesses the rise of Nazism and the beginning and the end of World War II.  With everything going on around him, however, Oskar’s world revolves around pleasing himself.  Despite Oskar’s self-centeredness, the film also examines the chaotic and tumultuous lives of the adults around him, especially his mother, Agnes (Angela Winkler), and his mothers two lovers, a German shopkeeper named Alfred (Mario Adorf) and Jan Bronski (Daniel Olbrychski), a handsome Polish man who works at a Polish post office in Danzig, either of whom could be Oskar’s biological father.

Many consider The Tin Drum to be one of the great films to come out of West Germany in the last quarter century.  The film, however, isn’t one of those beautiful and genteel foreign films or one of those French films shot to mimic the immediacy of realism.  The Tin Drum is an unflinching and dense psychological examination of people caught in complicated relationships who also have to navigate the narrow straights of their own interior lives.  It’s also a sweeping cinematic observation of Nazi Germany that unfurls its ideas simultaneously through symbolism and blunt literalism.  Like some glossy, Hollywood eye candy flick, The Tin Drum doesn’t allow the audience to look away; it’s like watching a miraculous apparition unfurl before one’s eyes or like watching a mesmerizing accident.

The focus of the story is, of course, Oskar, who is mostly not likeable.  In fact, there’s something menacing or even evil about him.  He seeks to shut himself off from the world or at least totally funnel existence through his wants, but what’s most fascinating is watching Oskar’s life grow (his personality doesn’t change) with the rise of Nazism.

This is powerful stuff, the kind of thing that stands out amidst all the pedestrian films.  The Tin Drum has had a somewhat controversial existence in the United States because there is both full and partial nudity of children, which some people saw as kiddie porn.  The film is not pornography or pornographic; this film is art.  The nudity and frank sex (including a sex scene between children) is actually handled quite carefully and with imagination by director Volker Schlöndorff, as he handles everything in his masterpiece.

9 of 10
A+

Updated:  Saturday, March 29, 2014


NOTES:
1980 Academy Awards, USA:  1 win: “Best Foreign Language Film” (West Germany)

1979 Cannes Film Festival:  1 win: “Palme d’Or” (Volker Schlöndorff – tied with Apocalypse Now1979)

The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: "Barton Fink" is Something ... Else (Happy B'day, John Turturro)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 72 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Barton Fink (1991)
Running time:  116 minutes (1 hour, 56 minutes)
MPAA – R for language and some scenes of violence
DIRECTOR:  Joel Coen
WRITERS:  Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
PRODUCER:  Ethan Coen
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Roger Deakins (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  Roderick Jaynes (The Coen Brothers)
COMPOSER:  Carter Burwell
Academy Award nominee

COMEDY/DRAMA/THRILLER

Starring:  John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, and Steve Buscemi

The subject of this movie review is Barton Fink, a 1991 period drama co-written and directed by Joel Coen and co-written and produced by Ethan Coen, although both brothers likely shared in producing and directing the film.  Barton Fink focuses on a renowned New York playwright who is enticed to Hollywood to write film scripts for a film studio only to discover hellish truths about his new job and home.

In 1991, The Coen Brothers, co-writer/director Joel and co-writer/producer Ethan, took the Cannes Film Festival by storm with their film Barton Fink, winning the Golden Palm as Best Picture and the award for Best Direction (an award that Joel has since won twice more).  John Turturro also won the Best Actor award for his role as the title character.  As much as I like the Coens' work, this is by far my least favorite film of theirs.

In 1941, intellectual New York playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) moves to California to write a B-movie script for a major studio.  His new boss, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) wants that Barton Fink touch for a new Wallace Beery wrestling movie.  Fink takes up residence in the Hotel Earle, a rundown establishment with a sheen of faux-grandeur.  He eventually meets his neighbor, the blustery, strange, and mysterious Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), who claims to be a traveling insurance salesman.  Although he meets many interesting characters, Fink is busy fighting writer’s block, and his new home becomes a hell for him as his deadline to deliver a script looms.

The first warning to a viewer before he sees Barton Fink is that the film is surrealistic, a situation in which the story contains lots of symbolism.  This is not standard, linear filmmaking, so the viewer has to closely watch the film for visual hints and listen to the soundtrack for audio clues to understand the story in lieu of having literal, obvious story details.  Don’t read this sentence as it may spoil the surprise of unraveling this film’s mysteries:  Hotel Earle is hell, the hell in which Barton suffers writer’s block, and Charlie Meadows is not only a killer, but he may well be “the devil.”  If you try to take this film literally, you will find it atrocious and boring.  Creative people, especially writers, will certainly understand, through Barton, the intense frustration that writer’s block can cause a scribe.

Still, for all its pretensions to art and its portrayal of the intellectual’s strong need to produce “something good,” Barton Fink is a misstep.  I will give a hearty nod to the Coens' ambitious intentions.  The acting is very good.  It’s less technical and more show.  It’s flamboyant and colorful and immediately describes the characters to the audience, none of this serious method stuff, just old-fashioned, grand pretending that fills the screen.  I really liked the film’s element of suspense and mystery.  The hotel is automatically creepy, but it’s nothing compared to the unusual landscape of the relationship between the characters.  One thing that certainly kept my interest was trying to figure out what these people had going on amongst themselves.  I could understand when two people were connected, but the joy was figuring out why they had a relationship.

Overall, the film is slow and occasionally plodding, especially in between moments of drama and intrigue, but the brothers have a way of waking you up just when you think that their film is loosing steam.  I recommend this to fans of the Coens’ films and to people who like that different kind of film that is called “art,” the ones that are about something other than just entertaining you.

No sirree, Bob.  The Coens might entertain you, but never at the cost of giving you cheap candy, not when they can use their talents to make a complicated confection, even if the end result doesn’t quite taste right.

5 of 10
B-

NOTES:
1992 Academy Awards, USA:  3 nominations: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Michael Lerner), “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration” (Dennis Gassner and Nancy Haigh), and “Best Costume Design” (Richard Hornung)

1992 Golden Globes, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture” (John Goodman)

1991 Cannes Film Festival:  3 wins: “Best Actor” (John Turturro), “Best Director” (Joel Coen), and “Palme d'Or” (Joel Coen-won unanimously)

Updated:  Friday, February 28, 2014

The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

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"Blue is the Warmest Color" Wins 2013 Palme d'Or

by Lucy Troy

The 66th annual Cannes Film Festival was held in Cannes, France from May 15 to May 26, 2013. I’ve included a list of winners of the “In Competition” categories, the main competition in which films compete for the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. I’ve included the winners from three other competitions: “Un Certain Regard,” “Cinefondation,” and the “Golden Camera.”

The “Grand Prix” is the second most prestigious prize given at Cannes, after the Palme d’Or. The competition known as “Un Certain Regard” is a part of Cannes that runs parallel to the competition for the Palme d’Or.

Steven Spielberg headed the jury for the main competition. Twenty films competed for the Palme d’Or. Jane Campion was the head of the jury for the Cinefondation and Short Film sections.

The lesbian romance and drama, Blue is the Warmest Color: The Life of Adele, won the Palme d’Or. Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1960s folk tale, Inside Llewyn Davis, took the second prize, the Grand Prix.

In an unusual move, the jury gave the Palme d’Or not just to Blue is the Warmest Color’s director, Abdellatif Kechiche, but also to the film’s two stars, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. Adele Exarchopoulos portrays a 15-year-old girl whose life is changed when she falls in love with an older woman, played by Lea Seydoux. The three-hour film caught headlines and gained notoriety for its lengthy, graphic sex scenes.

2013/66th Cannes Film Festival winners:

FEATURE FILMS:

Palme d'Or:
LA VIE D'ADÈLE - CHAPITRE 1 & 2 (Blue is the Warmest Color: The Life of Adele) directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

Grand Prix:
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

Award for Best Director:
Amat Escalante for HELI

Award for Best Screenplay:
JIA Zhangke for TIAN ZHU DING (A Touch of Sin)

Award for Best Actress:
Bérénice Bejo in LE PASSÉ (THE PAST) directed by Asghar Farhadi

Award for Best Actor:
Bruce Dern in NEBRASKA directed by Alexander Payne

Jury Prize:
SOSHITE CHICHI NI NARU (Like Father, Like Son) directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu

Vulcain Prize for an artist technician, awarded by the C.S.T.:
GRIGRIS directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

SHORT FILMS:

Palme d'Or - Short Film:
SAFE directed by Byoung-Gon Moon

Short Film Special Distinction Ex-aequo:
• HVALFJORDUR (WHALE VALLEY) directed by Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson
• 37°4 S directed by Adriano Valeio

UN CERTAIN REGARD:

Prize of Un Certain Regard:
L'IMAGE MANQUANTE (The missing picture) directed by Rithy Panh

Jury Prize - Un Certain Regard:
OMAR directed by Hany Abu-Assad

Directing Prize of Un Certain Regard:
L'INCONNU DU LAC (Stranger by the Lake) directed by Alain Guiraudie

A Certain Talent Prize:
LA JAULA DE ORO played by Diego Quemada-Diez

Avenir Prize:
FRUITVALE STATION directed by Ryan Coogler

CINEFONDATION:

1st Prize Cinéfondation:
NEEDLE directed by Anahita Ghazvinizadeh

2nd Prize Cinéfondation:
EN ATTENDANT LE DÉGEL (Waiting for the Thaw) directed by Sarah Hirtt

3rd Prize Cinéfondation Ex-aequo:
• ÎN ACVARIU (IN THE FISHBOWL) directed by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu
• PANDY (PANDAS) directed by Matúš Vizár

GOLDEN CAMERA:

Caméra d'or:
ILO ILO directed by Anthony Chen

Review: "The Tree of Life" is a Spacey Family Odyssey

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 6 (of 2012) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Tree of Life (2011)
Running time: 139 minutes (2 hours, 19 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for some thematic material
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Terrence Malick
PRODUCERS: Sarah Green, Dede Gardner, Grant Hill, Brad Pitt and William Pohlad
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Emmanuel Lubezki
EDITORS: Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber, and Mark Yoshikawa
COMPOSER: Alexandre Desplat

DRAMA/HISTORICAL

Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler and Tye Sheridan, and Kameron Vaughn

The Tree of Life is a 2011 family drama written and directed by Terrence Malick. In the film, the origin of the universe and life on Earth plays side-by-side with the memories of a middle-aged man having a spiritual crisis.

Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn), an architect, is unhappy, a lost soul in the modern world. While watching the planting of a tree, Jack’s mind drifts through his memories of life as a teenager in the 1950s. His family lived in a sprawling neighborhood in Waco, Texas. There was his father, Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt), and his mother, Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain), and two younger brothers, R.L. (Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan).

When he reaches adolescence, Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) is faced with a conflict. He must choose between accepting grace or nature, as embodied by each of his parents. Jack’s mother, Mrs. O’Brien believes in grace, which is gentle, nurturing, and authoritative. Mr. O’Brien embodies nature and is strict and authoritarian. Mr. O’Brien, who easily loses his temper, believes that you have to take what you want and also that his wife’s emphasis on love is foolish. Mrs. O’Brien teaches her children that the world is a place of wonder. Through his memories, a kind of trip through time to the past, Jack will try to reconcile his complicated relationship with his father. He also hopes to return something precious that is lost to his mother. Also, various scenes concerning the dawn of the universe and the formation of the Earth play out between scenes of the O’Briens.

In some ways, The Tree of Life is an experimental film, particularly in the way that Malick uses literal visuals in an abstract way to tell a story about the meaning of life and about the reconciliation of parent and child. The juxtaposition of both the universe and Earth’s past and future vividly recall Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, the way The Tree of Life’s special effects are created (without computer-generated imagery or CGI) is reminiscent of the special effects in 2001.

Malick’s film is both ambitious and humble in that he attempts to encompass all of existence, but channels that through the infinitesimal lives of flawed people. Those characters cannot come up with the big answers, but through love there is reconciliation and, if not answers, then, there is understanding of the relationships most precious to us.

The Tree of Life is an impressionistic story, and the viewer will have to pick and choose through images and colors to decipher the family drama at the center of the film. And this is a real family story, full of startling conflicts and ugly battles. There is, however, convergence and peace and love and beauty. The cast has to receive a lot of credit for their work; these moving, layered performances bring the literal to this often fantastic film. The trio that brings the O’Brien boys to life: Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler and Tye Sheridan, gives performances of complexity and profundity that are rarely seen in young actors – even among those that have received Academy Award nominations.

The Tree of Life can be perplexing and achingly slow. Malick also needed to put more emotion on screen and could have made more of the film a conventional narrative. Still, The Tree of Life is moving and deeply spiritual and also more ambitious than most films that star actors of the caliber of Sean Penn and Brad Pitt.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
2011 Cannes Film Festival: 1 win: “Palme d'Or” (Terrence Malick)

Monday, January 23, 2012

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Review: "Taxi Driver" Can Still Astound (Happy B'day, Martin Scorcese)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 42 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Taxi Driver (1976)
Running time: 113 minutes (1 hour, 53 minutes)
MPAA – R
DIRECTOR: Martin Scorcese
WRITER: Paul Schrader
PRODUCERS: Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Chapman
EDITORS: Tom Rolf and Melvin Shapiro
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA

Starring: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, and Albert Brooks

Some consider Taxi Driver to Martin Scorcese’s signature film and more than enough reason why this famed director should have been awarded an Oscar as Best Director a long time ago. One of the best-remembered film’s of the 1970’s, Taxi Driver is also one of the most influential American films ever made. It lives up to the hype.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a mentally unstable former Marine and Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a nighttime taxi cab driver to pass the time because of his insomnia. He perceives New York City as decadent, sleazy, and filled with phony people, and this perception feeds an urge growing in him to lash out at something or anything.

He first fixates on Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a worker in a senator’s presidential campaign. He convinces her to accompany him on a date, but later he frightens and angers her when he takes her to a bizarre foreign pornographic film. After Betsy dumps him, Travis becomes obsessed with killing the presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), who hires Travis’s taxi one evening. He also becomes fixated on a second female, Iris Steensma (Jodie Foster), a 12 year-old runaway and current prostitute. They become friends, and he urges her to leave her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel). These fixations and obsessions move Travis quickly down a path of shocking violence that leads to an equally shocking ending.

Bickle is one of De Niro’s most famous performances, and it earned him an Academy Award nomination. It’s a tricky role and character. Bickle could be likable, but he’s mostly pathetic, the very definition of a loser. Much of what Bickle has to say is done as voiceovers that give clues to the character’s plans, if not necessarily his motivations. What De Niro does is reveal the depths of the character almost entirely through exquisite body language and facial expressions. When it comes right down to it, Bickle doesn’t have a whole lot to say that would interest anyone outside of the police and head doctors. We learn the character by carefully watching De Niro. In gestures, both subtle and gregarious, in a face both serene and incensed, De Niro’s builds Bickle layer by layer, brick by brick. In fleeting moments, he makes Bickle pitiable and sympathetic, in others, dull and selfish. Sometimes Bickle’s rage is quietly focused; other times, it’s mad twister leaving feelings and bodies on the floor. Although a star and recognizable face at the time of this film’s release, De Niro transforms himself into Bickle, but leaves enough of himself in view to make Bickle fleetingly attractive, to use his matinee idol status to attract our attention to his disturbed character.

Scorcese deserves a lot of credit for allowing De Niro to roam, but it is Scorcese the director who channels the spirit of Bickle into an engaging movie. He has a deft touch at building the other characters and the story as a framework around De Niro’s painting. He knows who his subject is, but he also knows how to keep De Niro from banishing Paul Schrader’s excellent script to the background. Scorcese apparently realized that every element of the film worked: script, music, editing, actors, but he realized that De Niro was going to sell the total package to the audience.

You can’t like movies and have never seen Taxi Drive unless you’re very squeamish about dark subject matter and dislike stark realism. Still, that’s not enough reason to miss one of the great films.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1977 Academy Awards: 4 nominations: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Robert De Niro), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Jodie Foster), “Best Music, Original Score’ (Bernard Herrmann), and “Best Picture” (Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips)

1977 BAFTA Awards: 3 wins: “Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music” (Bernard Herrmann), “Best Supporting Actress” (Jodie Foster), and “Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles” (Jodie Foster); 4 nominations: “Best Actor” (Robert De Niro), “Best Direction” (Martin Scorsese), “Best Film,” and “Best Film Editing” (Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, and Melvin Shapiro)

1977 Golden Globes: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama” (Robert De Niro) and “Best Screenplay - Motion Picture” (Paul Schrader)

1994 National Film Preservation Board: National Film Registry

1976 Cannes Film Festival: 1 win: “Palme d'Or” (Martin Scorsese)

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Fahrenheit 9/11 a Tour de Force

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 146 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Running time: 122 minutes (2 hours, 2 minutes)
MPAA – R for some violent and disturbing images, and for language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
PRODUCERS: Jim Czarnecki, Kathleen Glynn, and Michael Moore
EDITORS: Kurt Engfehr, T. Woody Richman, and Christopher Seward

DOCUMENTARY/WAR

Starring: George W. Bush, Lila Lipscomb, and Michael Moore

His detractors have called documentary filmmaker Michael Moore everything from a polemist to a propagandist. The Oscar® winning director (Bowling for Columbine) is the best known American documentary movie maker, even better known than such acclaimed talents as Ken Burns and Errol Morris. In the late spring of 2004, Moore debuted is most controversial work to date, Fahrenheit 9/11, in which Moore aims his camera squarely at the administration and policies of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Fahrenheit 9/11 details the connections between the Bush family and various Saudi Arabian oil interests, especially the bin Laden family – ironic considering that Bush and the bin Laden family member who is the alleged architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, Osama bin Laden, are now mortal enemies. The film also takes a look at what happened after 9/11/2001, and how the Bush administration used the tragic event to push its agenda. Moore’s claims include accusations that Bush family and business associates have greatly benefited monetarily from the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through government military and petrochemical contracts. Fahrenheit 9/11 later takes a look at the affects of combat in Iraq on the soldiers and Iraqi citizens, and Moore interviews Lila Lipscomb, a proud and patriotic mother whose son dies in Iraq.

Unlike Moore’s films, Roger & Me and the aforementioned Columbine, Moore, as a character, does not make many on-screen appearances in Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit 9/11 is more focused than the Academy Award-winning Columbine because Moore has to spend a great deal of the film detailing his arguments, especially in the film’s first half. The first hour or so of Fahrenheit 9/11 is where Moore makes his arguments that George Bush and his cronies and administration used the war to enact government and social policies that they wanted to force on Americans all along and that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. gave them the opening they needed. Moore claims that ultimately the war in Iraq was more about the Hand Puppet’s administration’s desire to make money than protecting the U.S. What makes Michael Moore’s argument convincing is that he culls so much archival news footage, photographs, and video from recent news conferences. Thus, the subjects of his film do the vast majority of the talking and inadvertently convict themselves and prove Moore’s points.

The first half of Fahrenheit 9/11, when it focuses on George Bush, is outrageous and hilarious. Michael Moore has the gift of being both subtle and blunt when it comes to humor. His satire has the precision of a scalpel, and he presents arguments with the blunt force of a fist; he is brutal and relentless. Considering how so many Hollywood directors of comedies now rely on childish gross out jokes to sell their “humor,” Moore is likely the smartest film director of humor in America. He uses President Bush and his associates like hapless sock puppets for his jokes, all the while he expertly delineates their follies.

The second half of Fahrenheit 9/11 is a bit of a downer, as Moore takes his camera to Iraq to interview soldiers. He also interviews a soldier’s mother from his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Although many critics have claimed that Michael Moore portrayed the American servicemen and servicewomen as villains, I found that to be otherwise. The little time the soldiers are on camera, Moore shows warts and all, but the soldiers come out looking like humans and not killing machines. They make mistakes and do ugly things, but Moore shows them as the heroes – guys and girls just doing their jobs. If the job is wrong, it’s not by their hands, but it’s on the people who sent them there.

The other segment of Fahrenheit 9/11 that’s really hard to watch is Moore’s time spent with Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a slain soldier. His camera takes such an intimate look at her life surrounding her son’s service in Iraq that when tragedy strikes, the viewer also feels the pain.

As good as Moore is at making documentaries, he also uses film to make commentary, and he uses film as if he were an essayist. He’s also part of that other group of journalists, reporters, storytellers, etc. who go beyond the safe borders where mainstream American media won’t go. Michael Moore just happens to be the loudest source of alternative information concerning politics and society, and Fahrenheit 9/11 may be his most accomplished work. Still, it’s by no means perfect; sometimes the film looses focus (as during his visit with two Oregon state troopers). However, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sign of even greater things to come from Moore, and it’s one of the best films of the year.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
2004 Cannes Film Festival: 2 wins: “FIPRESCI Prize Competition” (Michael Moore) and Golden Palm or “Palme d’Or” (Michael Moore)