A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg, 2011)

Soul Meets Body

The films of Canadian director David Cronenberg are a nasty brood, wildly divergent in terms of narrative yet thematically connected by the same obsession with the un(natural) evolution of body and mind. Initially known for constructing some of the 1970’s and 1980’s most harrowing and challenging genre films (Shivers, Scanners, The Fly), Cronenberg has since evolved toward a more classical, calculated form of storytelling in films like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Despite this shift, Cronenberg’s brilliantly subversive obsessions remain the same.

With A Dangerous Method, a sly and smart examination of the tumultuous Carl Jung/Sigmund Freud relationship during the early 1900’s, Cronenberg reaches the apex of this auteurist progression. His thematic concerns (deformity, disease, repression), once so brazenly represented by external violence or sex, are almost completely internalized in A Dangerous Method, revealed meticulously through longing facial expressions, razor-sharp glares, and extended dialogue sequences. Fittingly, there’s much time spent on the process of relationships, the way people’s perceptions of each other change over time …

Read my full review at SanDiego.com.

War Horse (Spielberg, 2011)

Home Is Where the Horse Is

War Horse is a film of grand scope and of even grander emotions, an old-fashioned ode to a type of “aw shucks” sentimentality that could make you nostalgic for classic Hollywood or just downright nauseous. The titular steed at the center of Steven Spielberg’s laborious epic acts as the pure and unfiltered center to the various human experiences crossing its path, a familiar representation of home and comfort even during the darkest times. Examples range from acts of familial tenderness and sacrifice to the horrific violent specifics of trench warfare in WWI. These vignettes ebb and flow depending on the horse’s changing location, a problematic structure that favors broad narrative strokes yet lacks character development. Unfortunately, War Horse never stays in one spot very long, often rendering it’s drama inert and fleeting…

Read my full review at SanDiego.com.

The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974)

When I tweeted on New Years Eve that Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View would be my final film of 2011, friend and filmmaker Alejandro Adams responded, “Pakula in the 1970s is America.” I can’t get this idea out of my head. Between The Parallax View and All the President’s Men, Pakula envisions American corruption as a pervasive, festering rot nearly invisible to the common man, an omniscient force beyond the grasp of the everyday citizen. It only appears for a moment, in the flash of a photograph or the shadow in a dark corner. Plausible notions of good and evil do not matter here, simply because the ideology of corruption has taken over completely, operating on a level where morality and humanity no longer function as viable options. How do we explore the truth when the very essence of American identity is permanently and potently askew?

Warren Beatty’s Joseph Frady, a loose cannon journalist who attempts to infiltrate a corporation carrying out assassinations with homegrown killers, functions as an interestingly active character, someone driven by the need to pull back the veil of American conspiracy theories. That he not only fails, but falls into a perfectly calibrated trap designed by a puppet-master he can’t even fathom, is the film’s most devastating and salient point. I can’t shake how potently Pakula meshes repeating sound effects, interior long shots, and bits of silence in The Parallax View‘s final segment. The entire sequence seems to take place in a gigantic metallic tomb, the only color coming from the gigantic sign mosaic of Senator Hammond’s face, which aptly transforms into other caricatures of past presidents.  It’s like a slide show of an American history that was never real in the first place.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)

All of the recent Spielberg chatter inspired me to revisit one of the director’s earlier works. E.T. was the natural choice, mostly because it’s been more than a decade since my last viewing. I was immediately struck by the film’s organic examination of innocence and purity, a thematic cocktail that may feel sugary in this cynical day and age but really is something to cherish. I’d forgotten that E.T. is an unabashed kid flick, permanently rooted in the rush of emotions these young children experience on a moment to moment basis. The film asks the viewer to give in to its seamless rhythm, the children’s intoxicating conversations and the modes of communication they develop with E.T. For Spielberg, camaraderie and loyalty are more important than traditional plot devices.

E.T.‘s luminescent focus on wonderment and awe crescendos when Elliot looks over at E.T. slowly dying on the gurney, the boy’s eyes filling with the terror of imminent separation. This fascinating and draining moment encapsulates Spielberg’s motif of isolation and loneliness, a childhood fear he’s been examining throughout his filmography. A final note: Visually, much of E.T. is one long, fluid glide through exterior spaces, culminating in the fantastic bike sequence where federal agents chase Elliot et al. through a suburbia seemingly under permanent reconstruction.

Kill List (Wheatley, 2011)

Rigorous and uncompromising, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List is the kind of extreme genre filmmaking that will either make you squirm or swoon. I did a little of both. There’s plenty of undeniable precision and talent on display (especially Wheatley’s incredible ear for dialogue), and the film’s thematic underbelly always fascinates. The motif of rotting flesh and scraps is especially telling and grim, some kind of warped allegory to the economic malaise that is referenced a few times in passing.

Brutal violence is the only release in Kill List, yet the act itself only begets more ambiguity, an approach that ultimately culminates in the film’s ridiculously over the top ending. Still, the volatile camaraderie between the two leads (Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley) lends a certain human tragedy to their descent down hell’s rabbit hole. The performances alone are worth sitting through Kill List‘s sometimes inane narrative clues and foreshadowings. Wheatley’s previous film, the truly disturbing gangster/family saga Down Terrace, is a far more compact Molotov cocktail, yet Kill List shows Wheatley growing in ambition, even if that audacity is often grating to a fault.

The Best Films of 2011

In this, my first full calendar year of being professional film critic, I’ve been spoiled by cinematic excellence every step of the way. 2011 has indeed been an embarrassment of riches for any film lover, from the vast collection of foreign and independent titles that struck a lasting cord to even the few Hollywood offerings that resonated. I’ve tried to capture the rush of emotions in the prose below. Some of these capsules are comprised of previous thoughts reprinted simply because I can’t imagine expressing myself better at this point, and others contain fresh analysis. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

1. Mysteries of Lisbon / Raul Ruiz
Rarely does a cinematic experience swallow you whole, but Mysteries of Lisbon, maybe the closest any film has come to being an epic poem, does just that. Chilean director Raúl Ruiz, who passed away this year at the tender age of 70, injects his simmering passion play about hidden identities and repressed memories with a graceful kinetic rhythm, a sense of cyclical movement that allows an ornate 19th-century Portugal to become an ocean of unrequited love and tragedy. It’s a densely layered filmic landscape where textured interiors and sublime natural light surround an array of diverse characters—orphans, priests, soldiers, pirates, aristocrats—torn between emotional duress and philosophical enlightenment. The film’s demanding temporal and spatial aesthetic, captured by haunting long takes and overlapping audio, creates a narrative Rubik’s cube that keeps turning and twisting until each character has been aligned with their necessary fate. Yet despite its four-hour running time and laundry list of shape-shifting players, Mysteries of Lisbon is a breezy cinematic dream, a film that effortlessly mixes grand ideas (national trauma, historiography) with small emotional truths, ultimately revealing how one can perfectly mirror the other.

Best Holiday Films

In the spirit of the Christmas, I offer you my favorite Holiday films over at SanDiego.com, from 1940′s The Shop Around the Corner to 2006′s Last Holiday. Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for reading!

The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg, 2011)

The Adventures of Tintin brings America’s ultimate blockbuster director, Steven Spielberg, back to his B-movie roots in glorious fashion. It’s the most fun you’ll have at the movies this Holiday season.