Micro Film Reviews (And One Longish one) For January

Here’s a roundup of the films I saw in January

On First Release

Aliens vs. Pred­ator: Requiem (AVP 2) — Dire; really dire. The ori­ginal Alien films, espe­cially the first two, were amongst the best treat­ments of fem­in­ism in pop­u­lar film. Fast for­ward to AVP2 and it‚Äôs as if fem­in­ism, Ripley and a gen­er­a­tion of inter­rog­at­ing the prob­lems of Sci-Fi never took place. Women are releg­ated to being noth­ing more than append­ages to men. All that counts is the space between their breasts and their thighs, since they only exist to pleas­ure or pro­cre­ate. The mon­sters are nowhere near being the scar­i­est thing in this film!

Amer­ican Gang­ster — Com­pel­ling, harsh and thor­oughly plot-driven. Rus­sell Crowe’s fant­astic energy more than com­pensates for Den­ziel Washington‚Äôs occa­sional wooden moments. Really solid cine­ma­to­graphy and visual design. Excellent.

Atone­ment — Grip­ping, intel­li­gent and well-crafted. One of the best musical scores I’ve heard in a long time. Really solid per­form­ances, visu­ally mem­or­able and in the end deeply sat­is­fy­ing. Pos­sibly the best war film of the decade and the scene on the beaches of Dunkirk is one of the most visu­ally stun­ning and mor­ally chal­len­ging moments in recent cinema.

The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­ited — It‚Äôs filmed in India, it looks like India, it bor­rows music heav­ily from Indian films and yet it almost totally fails to evoke India. Of course, that‚Äôs because this isn‚Äôt a film about India at all Rather it is an asin­ine, con­trived, achingly pre­ten­tious and relent­lessly nar­ciss­istic film about a dys­func­tional family look­ing to recon­cile itself regard­less of the con­sequences to anyone around them. India is noth­ing but a quirky, fash­ion­ably hip back­drop. Eth­ni­cit­ies are dropped into the scenes based on how they look, rather than how they might func­tion, socially or geo­graph­ic­ally within the plot. The tragic death of a child is treated as little more than an oppor­tun­ity for the self-enlightenment of the main prot­ag­on­ists. Temples are noth­ing but col­our­ful back­grounds to a child­ish, post-hippie-trail ver­sion of enlight­en­ment (while the dark skinned faith­ful all sit, sub­ser­vi­ently, in the back­ground). If the film has any saving grace it is India‚Äôs own relent­less colour and harsh­ness, coupled with some great per­form­ances from Amara Karan and Irfan Khan. But, really, that is far from enough to save this nasty little film.

The Edge of Heaven — Des­pite a con­trived plot and some incon­sist­ent acting, this film reveals itself as a thought­ful, com­pas­sion­ate and visu­ally inter­est­ing drama at the cross­roads of German and Turk­ish cul­ture. As a study of the issues raised by migra­tion and cul­tural ali­en­a­tion (such as third cul­ture child­hood), this is more than worth a look.

Eliza­beth: The Golden Age — It takes a rare cine­matic ‚Äúskill” to trans­form a power­ful story, based as it is on a moment­ous period in his­tory and in turn into such a turgid, dull and unin­spir­ing film. It’s not just the car­toon char­ac­ter­isa­tions that sink this movie (Eliza­beth as Brave­heart, Sir Walter Raleigh as Errol Flynn, The Gimpy King of Spain and a his­tor­ic­ally inac­cur­ate Jesuit straight out of the Da Vinci Code), it‚Äôs also the rud­der­less musical score and lack of visual cour­age and imagination.

The Golden Com­pass — After having made such a suc­cess­ful trans­ition to the stage, it seemed reas­on­able to assume that His Dark Mater­i­als would also make for an impress­ive series of films. But, this open­ing instal­ment is so vapid and evac­u­ated of mean­ing that it left me with me hoping that the series will die right here and that no sequels will be made. If reviews and poor box office tak­ings are any­thing to go by, that hope may well be fulfilled.

The Kite Runner — Out­stand­ing, reward­ing and tightly focussed film-making, which is saying some­thing given the range, in time and geo­graphy of the plot. There‚Äôs a beau­ti­ful heart within this dark, chal­len­ging and at times uncom­fort­able film. Invent­ive and beguil­ing score (and use of in scene music), con­fid­ent use (or absence) of colour and solid devel­op­ment of char­ac­ters make this a very sat­is­fy­ing movie experience.

My Blue­berry Nights — Stun­ningly shot, won­der­fully scored and beau­ti­fully paced. Yet, des­pite these strengths (and great per­form­ances from Nat­alie Port­man and Jude Law) this film never man­aged to rise above it‚Äôs road movie set­ting. That said, it may be the most beau­ti­ful road movie ever made.

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