My Travels And A Little Bit of This And That: Overview of some recent films I've seen in the las...

My Travels And A Little Bit of This And That: Overview of some recent films I've seen in the las...: This is not going to be a comprehensive critique of all the films I've seen merely a gentle overview which may stimulate some of you to...

Overview of some recent films I've seen in the last few weeks before end of 2013

This is not going to be a comprehensive critique of all the films I've seen merely a gentle overview which may stimulate some of you to go see the films reviewed or not. It's been a good year for films, in general, the roster has been quite rich and that's a good thing.  With the gradual disappearance of DVD's courtesy of Netflix and ITunes I worry that watching films the old conventional way, in a movie theater, will also become extinct in the not so distant future.  Perhaps this fear is unjustified, perhaps not.  Was talking to someone who has lived here for the last twenty years.  He distinctly remembers lines snaking around the block to catch a film in our little theater which still boasts five screening rooms.  I have never seen a lineup that big even for so-called marquee names like the Hunger Game franchise or any of the other blockbusters of the year which have all been screened here lasting only a few weeks at best.  True the community itself is not big, twelve thousand maybe double that in the summer although there are many communities of similar size or bigger not far away and no theater within a forty km. radius, that's a relatively big pool to draw from.  Technology is changing everything too fast and not always for the better.  I will revisit this topic in a few years to assess the state of theater going options meanwhile here are a few reviews of my latest forays.

Marius and Fanny:  Directed by Daniel Auteuil

A double bill French, no subtitles which would be a shame in any case since it's set in Southern France, Marseille specifically where the accent is so picturesque and half the fun of the movie.  This story of young, wronged love has been told many times but it still felt fresh in the hands of director and actor Daniel Auteuil and the young lovely actors he entrusted the main roles too.  Marcel Pagnol a native son of Marseille and its most famous auteur wrote the story which has been filmed more than once.  Fanny is in love with Marius but Marius has been bitten by the bug of the unknown he wants to escape the narrow confines of the bar where he works with his dad César who is also its owner.  Fanny accepts to let him go when an occasion presents itself for him to crew on a sailboat.  In her heart she knows he will never be happy until he experiences a life of adventure.  Shortly thereafter Fanny discovers she's pregnant and accepts to marry Panisse a much older man who well aware of the situation is willing to consider the child as his own and give him his name.  Panisse is a very honorable man, César approves of this choice even though he knows Fanny will never love someone other than Marius.  Marius reappears but Fanny, her heart breaking, decides to stay with Panisse, end of story.  It's simple, it's eloquent, it's heartfelt.  The one problem I had has more to do with the filming itself which was filmed more as a play than as a movie.  The camera was rather static, the sets were few and some of the action felt "staged" as a result.  Perhaps for financial reasons Auteuil did not make use of the beautiful Midi scenery.  There were a few overhead shots of Marseille and Notre-Dame de la Garde I wanted to see more of those since I was born right below the great cathedral true beacon of Marseille.  There were also a few excursions into the glorious Mediterranean "calanques" with the pines, the cicadas, the bouillabaise (fish stew) and the aquamarine water.  Would have loved more of those although the film was never meant as a travelogue of the region I'm letting maudlin sentimentality take over.  It's doubtful anybody reading this will have a chance to see these two films but if you're at all intrigued try seeking them out online if you have to.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints:  Directed by David Lowery

David Lowery is a young director I wasn't aware of prior to watching this film and he shows some serious promise. Again this is a story of young interrupted love,difficult to quibble with such eternal themes. Bob and Ruth love each other passionately.  One day a robbery goes horribly wrong, a shooting ensues, a gun is fired and a policeman is shot.  Ruth fired the shot but Bob having just discovered that Ruth is pregnant takes the fall. While in prison Bob has only one obsession, escaping and reuniting with Ruth and his child.  Comparisons have been made between this film and Terrence Malick's Badlands which featured a similar theme of star crossed young love and was also set in Texas.  Like Malick Lowery makes abundant use of the scenery and lets it speak for its characters, there is a lot of silence in between the words although that silence can speak volumes.  He makes great use of natural light although he's partial to sunset rather than sundown like Malick.
These are facile comparisons there will be ample opportunity for Lowery to prove whether he can go the distance as a director.  Malick has been notoriously spotty having completed only six films in a career spanning four decades, not a tremendous output, Lowery with three films to his credit is already halfway there in terms of sheer production. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara have genuine chemistry and Ben Foster as the wounded cop turned protector is also very good.

The Wolf of Wall Street:  Directed by Martin Scorsese

I had great hopes for this one, I've been a fan of Scorsese's work since earlier on in his career.  Raging Bull is still one of the greatest films of all times, a genuine hit you in the heart and guts masterpiece.  The term masterpiece is bandied around far too often but in the case of Raging Bull it's a deserving crown.  Of course there have been hits and misses in his career since those early days. The remake of the Chinese Infernal Affairs renamed The Departed and for which Scorsese won an Oscar was never as good as tight or as enthralling as the original and,in my opinion, not deserving of the Oscar.  Scorsese should have won for either Taxi Driver or better yet Raging Bull the Academy is often very shortsighted. Regardless I intended to discuss The Wolf of Wall Street and lay this one to rest.  I read somewhere that both Scorsese and Di Caprio couldn't wait to option the book on which the film is based.  I suppose it has a lot of the lurid elements Scorsese appears to prefer,drugs,sex, wantonness, lack of morality,violence not of a gun variety but of a predatory nature nonetheless and as a bonus not one single great female character.  This is something I have come to notice over the course of Scorsese's oeuvre.  He's a guy guy's director he simply cannot portray a female character without turning her into some kind of caricature either saint, sinner or both, bimbo or temptress, they never feel real, maybe Scorsese has a lot of unresolved mommy issues.
The film chronicles the rise and "fall" of  Jordan Belfort at first a small time trader who is content to swindle mom and pop's hard earned cash with the promise of untold returns on penny stocks.  Not satisfied with this scheme he soon graduates to bigger and more profitable targets, i.e. people who can afford to lose a lot of money and are just as greedy as Jordan Belfort and his crew of disreputable, amoral traders whose single soul destroying mantra is:  MONEY, MONEY, MONEY and its inevitable corollary: MORE,MORE, MORE.
The film is directed with brio and assurance, it's Goodfellas on an extra dose of steroids, without the guns and the murders reveling instead in the excesses of Wall Street gangsters in all their grotesqueness. The term reveling is well chosen Scorsese is having a lot of fun and so are Di Caprio and Jonas Hill, Belfort's second in command.  It's hard to fault the performance of Di Caprio he is in every frame, delivers long lines of dialogue to harangue his troops on a daily basis, loses control of his motor movements, forced to crawl to his car upon having taken one too many Quaalude and generally embraces these excesses with a kind of wanton abandon rarely captured on film.  It's definitely a one of a kind performance all the more since it didn't require any use of prosthetics, weight gain, weight loss the usual accoutrements of what constitutes a great performance.
Belfort is seductive in the same way that a poisonous snake can be both seductive and repulsive. For me the repulsion was stronger than the seduction and after three hours of unrelenting ugliness I found myself wanting
Belfort and cohorts to be arrested and put away for a very long time.  I suppose Scorsese wanted the excesses to speak for themselves, representative of that era when the sky seemed the limit for these young Turks of Wall Street and screwing people was the name of the day, the way the game was played.  Sadly it wasn't enough, I wanted a more potent statement, a more potent condemnation especially in light of the fact that nothing has really happened to most of the major players who brought about the crash in 2008 and
 that still stings, it stings a lot.  It's unfair to demand a political treatise from Scorsese who has never shown an inclination to do that in any of his films. He is content with observing, witnessing and letting the film speak for itself and I suppose, in the end, that will have to do.

American Hustle:  Directed by David O. Russell

American Hustle is a sparkling concoction like very good champagne it goes down rather easily although it's not quite the "Grand Cru" I was expecting given the considerable talent attached to the project.  The year is 1978 Jimmy Carter is President and everything still seems possible before the big crash of the 80's will put a stop to the party before resuming in earnest in the 90's.  Irving Rosenthal and his mistress Sydney Prosser aka Lady Edith Greensley, a fictitious British aristocrat with ties to the banking world, are successful small time grifters content to fleece unsuspecting clients eager to be fleeced in the if it's too good to be true it undeniably means it is.  This all comes to an end when their scam is uncovered by a zealous yet very unstable FBI agent with the name of Richie DiMaso.  The actors, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as Irving's deliciously crackpot blond bombshell of a wife Rosalyn are all uniformly great.  I would especially like to single out Amy Adams who is absolutely riveting as the conniving half of the duo with breasts semi-exposed for most of the film via waist plunging necklines she is sexy and fearsome with a hint of vulnerability. Of course everybody's hiding something in this film and the narrative thread of what and who is real runs throughout as a taught undercurrent. The period is lovingly recreated from the clothes, to the hair, to the makeup to the furniture everything is spot on.  I do have a few quibbles with the plot which at times veers on the incoherent, frankly it's a bit of a muddle if you're not paying close attention. Is it the best film I've seen in 2013 no....not for me, that honor still goes to the harrowing 12 Years a Slave which I already reviewed in my blog.

World War Z -  Directed by Marc Foster

I resisted renting this one for a while after watching too many zombies on The Walking Dead. I was feeling a bit of zombie overload although some people can never get enough of the soulless eaters. In a sense it's fitting that so many apocalypses feature zombies.  They are relentless, ravenous and their hunger for human flesh is never satisfied, sounds like the bankers, corporate cronies, CEO's and traders from Wall Street and beyond.  They too are never satisfied, their greed is unparalleled except it's a much more destructive yet more difficult to detect force, it works by increment after small increment till everything is consumed.  At least with zombies it's clean and efficient plus they leave nature alone, they're not into exploitation or their exploitation is not venal it's of a more carnal variety.
Marc Foster seemed to be an unusual choice for directing this latest apocalypse but upon reflection he does have a rather varied "oeuvre" to his credit.  To name a few:  Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner and Quantum Solace, not a bad résumé.  He does a very good job on this one too.  Some scenes are downright startling and terrifying, the one with the zombies climbing on top of each other to scale a wall is a winner, it does stay in your head and kudos to the poster too which is wonderful.  Brad Pitt does a credible job as the lone man against the hordes, he's brave, he's smart, he's a loving husband and father, in short he's everything you might want in your hero if the apocalypse ever came your way.  I won't spoil the ending although I'm sure many of you will be able to guess how it ends, in that way it's very predictable.  It's not irredeemably black like The Road which is post apocalyptic when everything has gone to hell already.  If you like zombies this one's for you.