gtzam Reviews

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

Powerful and moving modern western

[22 November 2005]

The "Three burials of Melquiades Estrada" is a multi-layered story of death, retribution, loneliness, and remembrance. Although it takes place in modern day Texas, its main character Pete Perkins, superbly played by Tommy Lee Jones, seems to be living resolutely in the past. He is determined to seek justice for his best friend's death and forces the guy responsible for to a journey across the borders in Mexico to locate the village of the deceased for a proper burial. This journey will bring forward the stark contrast between the values of two ways of life and the landscape transversed is both geographical and emotional.

Modern civilization throughout the film is mainly represented by 4WD cars, sniper rifles, dinners, shopping malls, trailers, and TV-sets incessantly showing soap operas, while the characters revelling into those manifestations are invariably emotionally numb, disaffected people, trapped to a perfunctory life from which they seem unable or unwilling to escape. Concomitantly the values of the old west, based on friendship, loyalty and commitment have ebbed, though they are still existent as embodied by the relationship of Pete with his best friend. Pete is forced to pursue his own sense of justice after being repeatedly scorned by the contemptuous behavior of the authorities towards him and his demand for rightful punishment of the culprit, a cool, violence prone and emotionally detached border-guard.

The story is masterly told in a sturdy manner that perfectly serves the complexity of the excellent screenplay by an apposite use of flashbacks and wonderfully shot sequences. All the performances are top notch in their expressive minimalism, greatly contributing to the lasting emotional impact of this outstanding film.

Oliver Twist (2005)

Excellent adaptation

[11 November 2005]

Roman Polanski's film is an authoritative take on Dickens' classic. It is expertly paced, slowly immersing the viewer into the plight of the young orphan and its predicament in Victorian England. Through a meticulous period reconstruction, superb acting, and effective characterization (all the secondary characters are memorable), the typically Dickensian theme of the survival of Innocence against all odds is dramatized with utter conviction. The omission of the excessively melodramatic elements from the original story (Oliver's family back-story for instance) contributes greatly to the story's strength by minimizing any trace of implausibility or mawkishness, thus providing a wide-ranging portrait of the Victorian society with its intrinsic inequalities and its rather warped sense of justice. The visuals are splendid and the prevalent detached and non-judgmental approach to an easily emotive story is simply the signature of master director Roman Polanski, who is functioning here on top form.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Riveting, first-class film-making

[4 October 2005]

The "The Beat that my heart skipped" is an immaculately crafted and relentlessly gripping film. Its existential premise (a dodgy estate broker feels a sudden urge to rekindle his long abandoned passion for piano-playing whose rarefied world comes in contrast with his everyday life and seedy activities) is rooted in the world of film-noir. The escalating conflict between his "duties" and his lofty aspirations is unerringly captured while maintaining an eye for subtle but telling characterization of the supporting characters. Through his inner turmoil, the main drama materializes and the theme of unfulfilled potential due to a multiplicity of factors not always within somebody's control poignantly emerges.

Jacques Audiard, not the most famous but certainly one of the most talented french directors of the last ten years, has remarkably transcribed the mythology and some of the most eminent film-noir themes onto the modern era. The framing, lighting, music (especially its juxtaposition), mood and plot development are spot-on while the main performance my Romain Duris is career defining. The film stands out as one of the best modern neo-noir -a film with a rather singular style, akin to the director's equally commendable previous works.

Angel (1937)

Neglected gem, deserves reissuing.

[31 May 2005]

The Lubitsch touch is omnipresent in this relatively unknown but extraordinary romantic comedy. The theme of a potential marital infidelity of a disaffected upper class wife (a gleaming Marlene Dietrich) is dealt with unusual sophistication and insight, building up slowly to a brilliant denouement, while the core dilemmas and the predicament of the main character are continuously and subtly underscored. The confrontations between the characters are a delight of restrained pathos, whereas Lubitsch, unsurprisingly, perfectly recreates a confined world of rigid social norms that suppresses any emotional profusion. All the performances are top notch, the secondary characters are equally memorable and the whole film is pervaded by the genius of one of cinemas most charismatic directors, Ernst Lubitsch. One wishes that modern romantic comedies had only maintained even a fraction of the wit and incisiveness that Lubitsch established as a norm in the 30s.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Unmissable

[10 February 2005]

There is more than meets the eye, however ample this initially may be, in Clint Eastwood's astounding film. It is more than a gripping and brilliantly performed drama of the rise and tragic fall of a female boxer who is taking her last chance for success in life.

The film is a perceptive portrait of social outcasts who, having failed for a variety of reasons to integrate into the society , try to survive in their own enclaved world. Frankie Dunn's (Clint Eastwood) gym is the focal point of this world, a place so untouched by time that seems outlandish. A place that harbours past dreamers who landed abruptly (Morgan Freeman) as well as those who like Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) want to put all their efforts for one last chance of success. For Maggie, unlike her predecessor who dumped once and for all the place and his mentor when he got his chance for the title, success does not necessary translate onto money, but it is more a form of recognition, acceptance and self-esteem or even survival, at least in her own mind. She is sneered and scorned by her family despite her generous efforts of proving her worth and showing her affection. Her actual family lies in the gym and her relationship with Dunn, who is estranged from his family and cannot find solace in the established institutions (Church), becomes blood relationship as time goes by.

Boxing is treated in the movie in a matter of fact way - a last refuge for the underdogs and a savage route for survival in a savage world. Boxing itself is indeed peripheral to the movie's central core which is mainly concerned with how relationships evolve (or not) in that isolated world rather than victories.

The story is told, unsurprisingly being a Clint Eastwood film, in a deceptively simple but extremely subtle and effective way. There are no high-pitched hammered out scenes to extract emotions from the viewer despite the fact that there were plenty of opportunities in the storyline. Clint Eastwood's directing style can be compared to going from one point to another from the shortest possible way, a method that allows him to go straight in the heart of the matter by separating the wheat from the chaff in order to achieve a genuine degree of representation. A "Million Dollar Baby" represents movie classicism at its perfection.

Five Evenings (1979)

Masterly chamber piece

[6 February 2005]

Nikita Mikhalkov's adaptation of Bolodin's 1958 play "Five Evenings" is a wonderful Chekhovian film on interrupted love, dashed hopes and dreams, and unfulfilled happiness. This poetry of everyday life is put together with extreme flair by Mikhalkov who elicits pitch perfect performances from all of his cast members while assiduously using the cinematic means at his disposal to their expressive maximum. Such mastery of style becomes apparent after realising that although the film takes place exclusively indoors, there isn't the slightest tinge of filmed theatre. The subtle but brilliantly effective use of music, along with some innovating editing contribute to strengthening of the the emotive power of a film that occasionally reaches moments of transcendence.

The Fire Within (1963)

Outstanding study of existential anxiety

[9 January 2005]

This remarkable film traces with an almost clinical precision the last two days of a terminally desperate man. He is a former Parisian dandy, estranged from his wife due to his drinking problem and who, after having just managed to clear himself up in a clinic, finds no reason in going back to society to continue his life. His decision is already taken, but he gives himself a last chance of trying to establish a meaningful connection with the surrounding bourgeois environment by meeting his old friends and former lovers. Is it a last cry for help or a final farewell to a way of life which he finds phony, hollow and meaningless?

This esoteric and highly personal journey is masterly handed by the versatile Louis Malle, who perhaps has created his masterpiece. Framing, editing and most of all acting are calibrated to perfection in order to convey a holistic sense of existential despair, the portrait of a man who feels that he has spent his life waiting for something that hasn't appeared and is not worth any longer the wait.

The Glass Cell (1978)

Noteworthy crime movie.

[15 December 2004]

A rather forgotten but very interesting adaptation of a novel by Patricia Highsmith. The plot is simple: A man, unjustly convicted for criminal negligence to 5 years imprisonment, gets released from jail and is being increasingly entrapped to a web of jealously regarding his beautiful wife's activities while he was locked-up. The film adroitly examines the corrosive effects of jealously that gradually generate a form of mental confinement which effectively proves to be equally unbearable with the physical one. It unfolds with almost clinical precision, its use of location is inspired and the performances sharp and convincing (avoid the dubbed English version). The climax could have been stronger but it generally captures the amoralism of Highsmith's work as well as some other more well-known adaptations of her work.

Samaritan Girl (2004)

Brilliant and frustrating at an equal measure.

[30 October 2004]

This is undeniably a work of considerable formal rigor. Director Kim Ki-Duk uses deceptively simple but tellingly precise visual compositions to narrate his seemingly simple tale of loss of innocence, guilt and redemption. Initially everything seems transparent and self-evident in the story until intangible elements slowly seep into the structure causing ambiguity and bringing emotional turmoil that remains mostly subdued. The main plot premise, however, might seem a bit exaggerated or overblown to someone who cannot easily accept the depicted motivations for the actions of the two main characters (the girl and its father), especially considering the scarcity of social or psychological signifiers. Consequently, the movie works better on a symbolic than dramatic level, as its wonderfully concise final scene demonstrates. A must see.

Collateral (2004)

Classy thriller

[26 October 2004]

Yet another stylish thriller by Michael Mann who is currently without peer in the neo-noir crime genre. It has a formulaic (lonely taxi-driver is trapped on a death ride with a lonely killer) but solid plot, a superb sense of time and place, well sketched characters whose actions raise the viewer's attention for other reasons than the usual action movie logistics , and some ultrakinetic and suspenseful action scenes which put most of the recent action movies to shame. The performances serve the crisp characterizations well and Mann ,expectedly, imbues the story with his unerring use of the L.A. locations and his impressionistic visual flourishes. It is a more straightforward genre piece, lacking the complexity of "Heat" and the ambition of "The Insider" and "Ali" but, sparing the overstretched ending, it is a perfectly realized thriller from one of the most exciting directors working today.

A Home at the End of the World (2004)

Unimaginative, hackneyed, and pointless

[1/10 · 12 October 2004]

A lame attempt at capturing the special relationship amongst two childhood friends through approximately 15 years of their lifetime. The film is devoid of any dramatic momentum, merely depicting events and trite situations from their everyday lives without bothering to place them in any wider social or psychological context. It resorts to all imaginable types of clichés with the most annoying being the portrayal of the gay character whose ending is distressingly predictable. There is hardly any narrative focus that can make this movie worth watching and by the end it seems more like a trimmed version of a TV series than a feature length film. A must to avoid.

The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)

Relentlessly challenging cerebral ghost story

[12 October 2004]

Jacques Rivette's "Histoire de Marie et Julien" is bound to confound or disappoint today's audience, but not the followers of this director's work. The film does not conform to the dominant norms of current film-making that require a solid plot with familiar or identifiable characters whose actions are socially or psychologically motivated in order to have a semblance of verisimilitude. Its characters seem to inhabit more the filmic universe than a real one and a correspondence amongst those two is not straightforward to establish. The situations explored here (blackmail, amour fou, guilt, resurrection etc) and the characters actions are elliptically presented, but they, through a meticulous and extremely precise reconstruction of the filmic reality, uncannily make perfect sense within the narrative, provided that the viewer does not try to interpret the action using concepts alien to the filmic reality.

The film requires from its audience constant participation to grasp its narrative subtleties and the patent exploration of abstract concepts such as time (cf. the last line of the film is "give me some time"; Julien is a clock meddler), the fusion of dream and reality (the first chance meeting is initially dreamt but occurs immediately afterwards; Marie's dreams command her actions when awake), guilt and redemption (the subplot involving the blackmailed woman and their sister) etc. The cyclic structure of the film with four chapter denoting different, albeit subtle, shifts in narrative perspective invite the viewer to adjust his approach according to the tonal modulations of the unfolding story. The reflexive nature of the filmic story becomes, thus, a vehicle for self-examination on behalf of the viewer of held preconceptions and ideas related to the issues unravelled within the film.

A uniquely rewarding movie for those willing to be engaged in its narrative discourse. The work of a master.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

First class political thriller

[10 October 2004]

Jonathan Demme's 2004 remake of John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" is one of those rare cases where a remake is worthy of (or even an improvement in some aspects) the original film. It transposes the action of the original in the modern era, intelligently reflecting the issues that currently dominate the current political climate. Unlike the original, it is stylistically a more straightforward genre piece, tightly paced and brilliantly performed. Denzel Washington has a more substantial role than Frank Sinatra and gives a wider range performance. All the cast is memorable to say the least, adding conviction and credibility to a conspiracy plot that resonates well with today's political situation. It compensates the lack of memorable set-pieces of the original by adding a more humane dimension to its characters and playing out the dramatic dimension of the events. A major thriller of considerable accomplishment, it ranks among other classic political thrillers of the seventies such as "The Parallax View".

Finding Neverland (2004)

Finding Nothingland

[8 October 2004]

The only thing that the viewer would find after watching this pedestrian TV-style movie is unsurmountable boredom. The film portrays the pleasures of escapism in the most trivial and unimaginative way. Having Johnny Depp running dressed like an Indian in front of Kate Winslet's children can hardly introduce them to an alternative world created by the powers of imagination. Also the relations between the adults are too pat and convenient to provide any dramatic momentum in this movie. All the potential sources of conflict are glossed over in favour of a predictably lame happy ending. Adequate performances and crisp photography as someone would expect from a period piece, but not much else. For alternatives, the standard choice is "Mary Poppins" and the superior choice is Terry Gilliam's "Time Bandits".

Women in Love (1969)

Exasperatingly erratic although not as bad as it could have been

[7 October 2004]

This adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel turned out to be one of Ken Russell's more balanced movies. However, this does not mean much since his visual histrionics and his disregard for dramatically convincing character development eventually lead the film to collapse into a series of arbitrary vignettes representing various degrees of unjustified emotional outbursts. The dialogues are laboured, the characters sketchily presented and their actions increasingly make less sense as the time goes by. It survives more as an accumulation of some strong scenes than as a coherent movie, but the photography is inspired and most of the performances are great with the actors trying their best in their underwritten parts. There have been far worse movies taken from Lawrence's work, making this one worth seeing.

The Door in the Floor (2004)

Bland and dramatically inept movie

[6 October 2004]

Despite its dramatic intentions, this adaptation falls flat on its face regardless the decent performance by Jeff Bridges, who is also the only adequately drawn character in the entire film. The main problem of the film is that it lacks any sense of passion and dramatic purpose that would enable to engage the viewer either at emotional or intellectual level. The love scenes between Eddie and Marion are passionless and filmed in a timid manner, resembling glances through a peephole. The scenes are piling up haphazardly,lacking any organic connection to character motivation and plot development. Consequently, the viewer quickly loses interest in the story since nobody comes out as a dramatically compelling character, neither the main "issue" is particularly original nor interesting. Everything is perfunctorily presented and the underwhelming climax is forced and contrived. As Jeff Bridges' character would have said, the specific details are absent and triviality has prevailed.

Savage Souls (2001)

Pointless, over-descriptive and dull...

[27 July 2004]

Despite the unquestioned talent of Raul Ruiz, this movie is an unqualified disaster. The plot drifts aimlessly, tv-series like, coupled with inadequate acting and over-elaborate voice-over in order to further the "action" in an ad-hoc manner. Practically very little of any importance actually happens, even less of what occurs on the screen is dramatically convincing in this terminally unexciting journey of a manipulative young girl and her encounters in rural France of the 19th century. Vacuity disguised as ambiguity or worse, profundity. Good cinematography though, but there are far better literary adaptions done recently such as Assayas' "Les destinees sentimentales".

The Soft Skin (1964)

One of Truffaut's most accomplished films

[17 September 2003]

Truffaut filmed La Peau Douce immediately after the international success of "Jules et Jim". Released at the heyday of the nouvelle vague, critics and audiences panned the film as a futile resort to bourgeois classicism after the unconventional antics of his previous masterwork.

They could not have been more mistaken. Time has treated La Peau Douce better than most of his later efforts. It is definitely a triumph of direction with each scene being carefully planned and meticulously structured, not unlike a Hitchcock movie. In practice, Truffaut transposes Hitchcock's mechanisms of suspense into a seemingly trivial story concerning the illicit love affair of a distinguished editor/author with a younger stewardess and its withering consequences. The characters and the milieu of the story are effortless evoked, but the main joy is derived from the visual inventiveness that Truffaut shows in scene after scene. It's a triumph of a purely cinematic mode of expression, which Truffaut was one of the few who had really mastered it.

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Potentially interesting but terminally flawed vampire movie

[8 April 2003]

This film begins on a very interesting premise: the intrinsic sadness of being immortal, having to live from other people's blood, aimlessly wondering through time and history. Definitely a more existential take of the vampire myth. Unfortunately, it falls short of portraying these issues in a dramatically compelling way. Despite the remarkable art-direction and the unnoticeably creative digital effects, Jordan's direction is clunky and episodic without an acute sense of pace that might have given some life to a drab charting of events on a vampire's 200 year life span. There is practically no focal point in the plot apart from a vague sense of seeking some meaning in a vampire life, something that is forced in the movie than developed, lacking decent scenes to support it. When the film tries to get serious, it becomes laughable mainly due to badly written dialogue and to catastrophic performances. Tom Cruise tries but fails to become convincing as a brash, hedonistic vampire aristocrat, Brad Pitt is totally inept in conveying any sense of existential anguish and Banderas is as usually monolithic. A truly missed opportunity for a compelling take on the vampire myth.

Nashville (1975)

A shallow view on the american shallowness

[24 November 2002]

I can't fathom the excessive praise given on Nashville and its classic status. It is put together with Altman's trademark fluency present in all of his films:in the great ones (Short Cuts, Gosford Park, The Player) and in the tedious ones (MASH, Cookie's Fortune, Pret' a Porter).My viewing experience was irritating due to Altman's inherent contempt for his characters together with his assertion of superiority towards their petty behaviour and aspirations, the meandering plot (if a dozen of scenes had ended in the cutting floor,you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference), let alone the country-western songs that constitute a first rate torture for the non-adherents. The only character who could offer some insight or commentary to the social mileau portrayed in the film was the BBC documentary producer, but Altman in order to avoid any attempt for critique (mere exhibition is far more easier) makes her as idiotic as the morons that are featured in the film. The political subtext of the movie is undeveloped and the ironic song of the ending, sung collectively by the audience after the celebrity assasination ("It don't worry me"), although aptly underlines the passivity and political apathy of all those individuals, it, nevertheless, fails to offer any constructive alternative and moreover it is characterised by a pervese rejection of the possibility of such an alternative. Altman is more of an observer whose acuteness and incisiveness depends on the quality of the script that has in hand (cf. Gosford Park or Short Cuts), rather than somebody who being dissatisfied with a given situation has something else to propose or at least illustrate what he perceives as being problematic. Throughout the film I found it hard to care about any of the 24 characters or the situations (greatly resembling those of sitcoms) that were involved because they resembled more to comic sketches than complex individuals (Shelley Duvall's portrait of a Californian chewing-gum, hot-pants bimbo, to name the least). A rather overrated film which demonstrates Altman's technical proficiency together with his fundamental limitations.

Les Destinées (2000)

Exemplary period film

[30 January 2001]

This exquisite three hour film, set in France, begins at 1900 and ends around 1930, covering in the way three decades in the life of an idealistic man, Jean Barnery, who, although began as an protestant priest, ended up becoming an industrialist in his family porcelain factory. Through the life of a complex character, a full web of compromises, illusions, deceptions, tragedies, and mistakes emerges, capturing accurately the conflictual transformations of the era as a relation to the hero's personal journey. Despite its novelistic structure that sometimes diminishes its dramatic power through big time lapses, the film manages to retain its own life and conviction through careful development of its main ideas that pervade the whole story: The unavoidable compromises, the vicissitudes of life, the difficulty in applying your ideals, the emotional fulfillment and the problems of commitment, the futility of things. Easy answers are not provided, sometimes questions are more important. Exquisitely directed by the talented Olivier Assayas, and wonderfully performed (Emanuelle Beart and Charles Berling give subtle and nuanced performances, capturing perfectly the transitions in their characters' emotional state) the film, contrary to other period pieces, never lags despite the length. A must see for people interested in a serious piece of filmmaking.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Another powerful journey from Martin Scorsese.

[22 January 2000]

With "Bringing out the Dead" Martin Scorsese makes a welcome return to the dark streets of New York City. The film deals, in a typically Scorsesian way, with the hellish life of an ambulance driver who is haunted by images of people he failed to save. Like other archetypal Scorsese heroes in the past, his innate sense of guilt causes severe internal suffering which can only cease after a series of redeeming acts at the end of a bumpy journey. Only this time the source of the hero's guilt is a direct product of his working environment and it is rather specifically designated to the people, and one in particular, that he didn't manage to save.

Scorsese masterfully recreates the driver's microcosm with unflinching accuracy. The everyday pain which makes most paramedics and doctors to become insensitive to the limit of cynicism, the grim reality of the NYC slums and the human despair come dynamically into surface through Scorsese's direction. The supporting characters contribute greatly to the whole structure and Nicholas Cage's performance is excellent. All these elements together with a wisely chosen style that doesn't shun some funny moments from surfacing, help the film to overcome some contrivance of the screenplay which makes the expected redemption scene rather dramatically inert and somehow unconvincing. However, I hardly know any other recent movies that are so intelligently concerned with existential issues and that so consistently avoid any convenient resort to cynicism, a crowd pleasing device that has been widely used recently. A must see.

Summer of Sam (1999)

Highly successful as a mood piece.

[22 January 2000]

Summer of Sam displays all of Spike Lee's primary talents. He effortlessly captures the aura of NYC, and in particular the world of his characters. The inspired soundtrack, the uniformly excellent performances and his almost immaculate sense of pace put this film artistically far above most recent American films. His approach resembles to that of jazz musician, and consequently some strident improvisations, repetitions with a certain lack of complexly developed characters and intricate situations, are inevitable. Overall, a work of considerable directing skill.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Amateurish Nonsense.

[1/10 · 8 November 1999]

The only reason for seeing The Blair Watch Project is to realise how the contemporary film "criticism" is determined by marketing strategies. Plotless, clumsily edited and shot, fake and uninvolving. I was under the impression that after The Shining, Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now, "respectable" critics would at least be able to tell a true horror movie from a cheap thrill sophomore flick. If you believe that cinema can still be considered a form of art, boycott this overhyped turkey.

The NeverEnding Story (1984)

One of the worst films of the century!

[1/10 · 9 July 1999]

Forget Ed Wood's films and the thousands brainless teenage flicks. At least they were not that ambitious, expensive and with the potential of The Never Ending Story. No wonder why Michael Ende's name doesn't appear on the credits. His world has nothing to do with this mechanical, gaudy and utterly tasteless recreation. The film has no pace, the perfomances are inadequate, the structure feeble, the ideas imposed instead of being developed. What a terrible waste of money. Spielberg's films, despite their weaknesses, have a lot more warmth, imagination and cinematic strength. The electronic score by Giorgio Moroder is unsuitable for a classical style fantasy tale and it is just the tip of the iceberg in this horrendous misconception.