The Frame » film-2004

Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque

Jandy — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:30:53 +0000

If you like classic films, especially film noir, crime film, and B movies, or if you like the French New Wave filmmakers or any of the films they influenced – in other words, most films made since 1965 and many of the best films before that – then you owe a great debt to Henri Langlois. A Parisian cinephile, Langlois began collecting (often at personal expense) cast off film reels that studios felt weren’t worth anything, saving hundreds of films that no-one else seemed to care about. In the early 1950s he created the Cinémathèque Français, composed of both a screening theatre and a museum, which became the gathering place for budding Cahiers du cinéma writers and future directors like François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Godard. This documentary highlights Langlois’ place in film history, from the creation of the Cinémathèque to the riots in the late 1960s when the French government took it away from him. As a piece of documentary filmmaking, there isn’t too much special about the film, but it is a solid introduction to a figure who may not be as well-known as high-profile directors or actors, but whose work as a curator and exhibitor is every bit as important to film history.
Above Average

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Jandy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:53:31 +0000

Eh. I know a lot of people who love this film inordinately, but I found it underwhelming, to say the least. Will Ferrell is obnoxiously amusing as Ron Burgundy, the inappropriate anchorman of a popular news show. The rest of the cast is mostly just obnoxious, while Christina Applegate has the thankless job of playing the woman who tries to break into the boys’ club of a 1970s network and ends up (inevitably yet inexplicably) romantically involved with Ferrell. I’ll admit that it’s fitfully entertaining, but not enough to make it really worthwhile.
Below Average

Word Wars

Jandy — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:25:06 +0000

So when I started watching this, I was thinking it was the crossword puzzle documentary, you know, the one with Jon Stewart in it? But, no, that one is Wordplay. This one is about competitive Scrabble, and doesn’t feature anybody anyone’s heard of. Unless they’re in the world of competitive Scrabble, I guess. But it turned out to be fairly interesting anyway. I mean, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Scrabble tournaments, but it makes as much sense as spelling bees, I suppose. And some of these people were really into it, as in, they were making their living by winning Scrabble tournaments. Certainly makes my attempts at Scrabble seem feeble. There are really three or four guys they follow around, hearing their take on the somewhat insular world of Scrabble tournaments, up until the world championship. I guess since Spellbound did well, all the other sorts of games/competitions are trying to get into the documentary action. None have yet come close to Spellbound’s magic, though.
Average

We Don’t Live Here Anymore

Jandy — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:38:29 +0000

Pointless and dull tale of infidelity. You’d think a story about two couples whose close friendship is threatened by the affair of one husband with the other man’s wife, and the reciprocal spiteful affair between the other pair would at least hold a perverse interest, but it doesn’t. It tries to be deep and is boring, it tries to be passionate and is lifeless, in the end it tries to be noble and is just ineffective. It’s based off of short stories, which explains some of the lack of exposition, but the best short stories glean vitality from starting in media res, and gain thoughtful ambiguity from their lack of resolution. I can’t claim to judge the stories beneath this film because I haven’t read them, but the starts in media res and gives no motivation for the first affair, and ends with the first couple’s reconciliation, again with no discernable reason other than the filmmakers thought it ought to end that way. Granted, I’m all for stopping affairs and reconciling with spouses if that’s possible, but in terms of this story and these characters, it didn’t make any narrative or motivational sense at all, especially since we learn too little about the characters to care what happens to them. Good cast (Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Peter Krouse, Laura Dern) totally wasted.
Well Below Average

Before Sunset

Jandy — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:16:46 +0000

In one sense it was very nice to be able to spend more time with Hawke and Delpy’s characters from Before Sunrise. Nine years after they parted in Vienna (and failed to keep their date to meet up again a year later), they run into each other in Paris and wonder if this is their second chance. Again, it’s a long conversation…but this time, instead of having all night, they have only 80 minutes before his plane leaves, and the film plays out nearly in real time. There are a lot of lovely touches here, as in the first film, yet I’m not sure the loss of the ambiguity left by Before Sunrise is worth what we get in Before Sunset. I still enjoyed the film, and both writing and acting are every bit as wonderful as in the earlier film, it just seems a bit…pointless. But not the “I wish I’d never wasted my time on that dreck” sort of pointless; rather, the “I’m glad I saw that, but I think I’ll continue to think about the first one as a standalone film if you don’t mind” sort. Rather like the director’s cut of Cinema Paradiso.
Above Average

Primer

Jandy — Sat, 06 May 2006 21:04:45 +0000

Now this one I had to watch twice. Seriously. In between the two viewings, I scoured the internet for information about the film, and one review I read described it just about right: (not direct quote) Most movies about time travel either ignore the science necessary for time travel machines or make up outlandish but lay-person-comprehensible theories explaining how it is possible. In Primer, the science is central, and the science isn’t explained. There is no one involved in the time travel experiment who wasn’t intimately familiar with the necessary scientific ingredients, so watching the film feels something like being thrust into a conversation between post-doctoral scientists. It’s heady stuff, and yet fascinating. One would fear that it would end up sounding like a jargon-filled thesis or something, but it doesn’t…it feels real, not forced, as are so many movies and TV shows that have to introduce a novice character to explain everything to so that the audience has someone to identify with as they learn the ropes. Watching Primer is like jumping in to the deep end when you can’t swim. The intricacy is astounding, as the plot folds back on itself multiple times, and the narration is given much like the science–as if the audience should already know who is speaking to us and the basics of how the story plays out. It’s a movie that refuses to compromise an inch, and assumes its audience is intelligent enough to enjoy the attempt to figure it out. Honestly, it was refreshing in its complexity and its complete lack of condescension. Do I completely understand it even yet? No. But I’d rather be challenged by a movie that assumes I’m smarter than I am than condescended to by a movie that assumes I have the brain of a pea, like most Hollywood offerings do.
Well Above Average