Author name: Blake Williams

More empty theatres, huh? Even the adult cinemas are closing their doors in Brillante Mendoza’s grimy film about a family trying to maintain the last of three cinemas that they once ran after they had to shut two of them due to insufficient funds. As a drama about a medium-fucked up family, the film is engaging enough, but it inexplicably includes explicit sex and bursting ass boils to give the film an ‘edge’ that isn’t as sharp as was most likely hoped for. Flooded bathrooms, an unintended pregnancy, adulterous husband, and promiscuous transvestites abound, but the family still functions somehow (even the cinema that they run is called “Family”), remaining close-knit, and appearing to be genuinely affected when one disappoints another. The cinema as a family gathering is a long-extinct idea in this film’s universe, where the pornographic films refuse access to minors, and the action taking place in the films is more mimicked than viewed by the attending crowd. The films being shown are extremely low-budget, sub-xtube grade trash, perhaps anticipating the complete abandonment of cinematic craft that youtube is ushering in. This idea is literally shown in the film’s final shot with a Gremlins 2-esque meltdown, which, more than a tidy wrap-up for the film, shows the fragility of celluloid.

Many opinions and ideas of family that Mendoza has or intends to pose are unclear/absent in Serbis, and little in the film invites further contemplation after it is over, making the compelling film unfortunately forgettable and inconsequential.

Cinema’s future is, again and still, in a state of limbo, or at least that seems to be the pessimistic prognosis that is surfacing more and more often when a major film festival opens its gates. Declining ticket sales, raising home video standards, and lazier people all spell doom and gloom hypotheses for our beloved past-time. Such is the theme and undertone of two recent art-house experiments from the last few years, Fantasma by Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso, and Goodbye, Dragon Inn by Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-Liang.

Alonso’s mini-experiment between his more ‘complete’ films Los Muertos and Liverpool is rife with subtle ideas and suggestions, as well as unsubtle self-references that border on ironic narcissism. It is certainly his most urban film, escaping from the boonies to take place in a sterile loft which happens to be equipped with a generously sized screening room, conveniently screening/premiering his previous film Los Muertos. The building, and it’s location in the city, is arbitrary, though, as it is just as vacant and alien as the jungles, rivers, and seas which make up the settings of the rest of Alonso’s oeuvre. With a title like Fantasma, one is on the look out for anything out of the ordinary or potentially supernatural. One scene of uncanny deja vu is particularly startling, going beyond a simple synchronicity to be a flat-out impossible repetition of events. Later, the light from the film projector flows fluidly and ominously from the rear of the theatre and out through the left of the frame, creating a vector that cuts through the space as archetypically as the Lumiere train. Is this light the ghost, the phantom, that Alonso’s title is alluding to? Or does that distinction go to Vargas, the actor watching his own performance in Los Muertos, seemingly for the first time (perhaps even his inaugural visit to the cinema), Fantasma‘s central event, and arguably its climax. More likely, it’s the very act of watching a film in the theatre.

The film has a depressed air running through it because of the emptiness of it all, and I’m not only ascribing that trait to the theatre. While the film avoids the pedestrian observations that plague Goodbye, Dragon Inn, and is able to retain Alonso’s signature realism despite its smattering of magical-realist elements, it still can’t help but feel like another cynical, post-cinema statement where the characters wander around in a sedated shock as they witness the end, shoveling another scoop of dirt onto the ground that lays before the Cinematheque’s tombstone. It is too much to ask, apparently, that we at least wait until the movie theatre has actually vanished before writing its obituary. It could also be useful for a film that is critiquing this ‘death of cinema’ to be constructed more accessibly, perhaps more ‘mainstream’ even, so that it can reach the audience that is largely responsible for putting it on life-support in the first place. Making such statements in this structured, emotionally-and-narratively-stagnant state, with this pacing, only guarantees that the only audience that will see the film will be those who attend the film festivals in which they are programed. Needless to say, they’re preaching to the choir.

Meanwhile, Goodbye, Dragon Inn doesn’t merely show cinema sans an audience, but portrays its remaining attendees as meathead dunces with no manners. It would have been truthful and funny if the situations portrayed in the film, most of which are essentially attacking a poor submissive teenage boy, if they weren’t so over-amplified as to come off as Looney Tune-ish. In a massive, virtually empty theatre, every new patron crowds around the boy, kicking up their shoeless feet well into his comfort zone, unaware of claustrophobia or common courtesy. Characters enter and exit the theatre, often spending only a few minutes watching the film, while one woman cracks open nuts and crunches them in her mouth, rhythmically, finally scaring the defenseless boy away for good. So, I get it, modern cinema-goers are rude and don’t care about the integrity of cinema’s artistic value. But this observation is not enough material for a feature length film, and Tsai really has to draw this out to hit the 80-minute mark. Almost every shot, which are almost all completely still and well-composed, lasts twice as long as it should, at least. A shot near the end of a crippled woman climbing and descending the theatre’s steps is interminable. It’s beyond pointless, hitting a level of annoyance for the hamfisted demands to contemplate the emptiness.

Which again brings up the irony of mourning the death of cinema via sedated, uninspired filmmaking. If any film or cinematic movement is going to save the theatre-going experience, this certainly isn’t it. Goodbye, Dragon Inn threatens, many times, to become a slideshow presentation, while Fantasma, with its interesting ideas and all, is essentially an architecture study, devoid of humanity of any kind. I’m all for elliptical cinematic experiences lacking characters as much they lack a clear purpose, but, if anything, these films are an argument for the art gallery as the future home of celluloid, not against.

Oh, America.

Altman’s Nashville is so good because watching it is such an even balance of cerebral and visceral experiences; a tug of war that is laid out in the film’s opener in which a calculated, but solid, song about the nation’s bicentennial is being recorded in the same building as a hootin’ and hollerin’ gospel choir who allows their emotions to guide the music. Meanwhile, Henry Gibson’s Haven Hamilton, singing 200 Years, stops, and restarts, his song’s recording every time his pianist, Frog, makes a mistake. It’s a perfect pre-summary of one the film’s themes: the censorship of emotion and instinct in favor of the clean, measured, and reserved. Altman’s film is a hybrid of this duality, structurally and narratively. It’s an intuitive, fluid film about these structured procedures; dirty politics and soulful music, portraying events that are simultaneously scripted and natural. Some of the actors are real life musicians, and some of them aren’t, but everyone sings their own part, regardless. I know this is nothing too unique, especially today with a plethora of music biopics that use this strategy (Walk The Line, Ray, and, for one song at least, La môme), but it’s so significant here because of the beef that some of these characters receive when they don’t sing well. Altman’s Nashville is one defined by its inhabitants’ ability to sing (which may not be far from the real thing). Barbara Jeanne, who at many points is treated like a god in this town, and is the beating heart of this film, is booed off the stage when her mental state prevents her from completing a set. She and her husband shun the political backdrop of the moment, refusing to promote any party on the stage, and the moment she succumbs and performs in front of a banner at a huge political rally, it spells the end for her, and, thus, the film itself. Like in life, you can’t do it all, but it doesn’t mean that some aren’t expected to.

I’d never noticed how much Jacques Tati there was in the film until this most recent viewing, but the film’s structure and humor have notable similarities to the French master’s work. Crisscrossing dialogue in crowds (and with the monstrous cast and scope of this film, there is almost always a crowd) makes for a dense sound design that drops in snips and pieces of conversations from major characters and off-screen extras that mixes into absurd arrangements that recall great moments from Playtime‘s invention convention. The freeway pile up could be right out of the script for Trafic, providing one of several moments for almost the entire cast to interact candidly with each other. And then there is the complexity of the mise-en-scène, which, also like Playtime, often gives the viewer over a dozen points in the frame at a given moment in which there is significant action taking place. Especially at the opries and rallies, there are things that I caught while seeing this in the theatre that I never even detected on the DVD. Much of it is insignificant silliness, like a brief scuffle between strangers or a little kid up to no good, but it adds to the chaos of the time and place that are no doubt important in Altman’s vision.

Seeing this film and appreciating it more each time makes it more and more difficult to perceive Altman’s similarly realized Short Cuts as having much weight. It is, formally, almost a direct copy of Nashville. The looming, ominous helicopters spraying Los Angeles with insecticides, mirroring the patrolling van promoting one of the candidates through megaphones across Nashville, unite each city superficially by creating an element that one knows the characters all share as a common experience. The fixation on celebrity, the mundanity and plotlessness, and even the running time is mimicked in the inferior copy. Altman’s better homage to Nashville was his final film, A Prairie Home Companion, focusing especially on the music, comparatively folky and music-hally, lined with American tradition, celebrating life despite the unavoidability of death, as in the devastating “It Don’t Worry Me” redux that closes Nashville’s curtain after its beating heart has been shot.

I’d never seen anything Star Trek related before this film, not one episode, and not one movie. I was familiar with it enough, though. I knew about Spock and Captain Kirk and the guys with the strange foreheads and the space ship. I even think I tried to get into it at one point when i was little but got bored and turned it off. Born in the mid-80s, I just assumed it was too late to get into it, it would require too much back-tracking and education of the Star Trek principles and all that. And frankly I just don’t have an interest in science fiction fantasy. So, J. J. Abrams seems to have set out to make the Star Trek film exactly for someone like me; someone that really doesn’t give a damn about the frontier and its sci-fi fantasy genre. Abrams has made, with his Star Trek vision, an action film with Star Trek names and costumes and lingo. Out with one unappealing, nerdy – yet stylized and original – aesthetic and tone, and in with an even more rancid, blockbuster facelift. How every self-proclaimed Trekkie in the world isn’t burning crosses on Abrams’ lawn after this film is beyond me, let alone that so many are clamoring for a sequel. This film’s quality is on par with every single Star Wars ‘update,’ another franchise I never cared for but still had enough knowledge of to be offended by the inanity of George Lucas’ pathetic grasps at duplicating a nostalgia that cannot die peacefully, or soon enough.

Fanboys might wet their pants when the original Spock shows up in an elaborate plot twist, and they’ll probably shed a tear and applaud as he says that “Live long and prosper” line (which is obviously the raison d‘être of his presence in the film, and thus his entire subplot), but one wonders why a fan would be proud instead of angry at this exploitation, getting poor old Spock to eke out the line with his raspy voice, no doubt a whimper of what he used to be. Imagine if Mohammad Ali were brought in to fight a climatic match in Mann’s Ali for an idea of the embarrassment. Just watch Spock say it on the DVD if the slogan empowers you so much. I suppose the idea behind a project like this is that Trekkies watch modern action films and enjoy them well enough, but occasionally will catch a scene and think ‘man, imagine how awesome/hilarious that would have been if Spock/Kirk/whoever else had done/said that!’ And then we have it realized here. And then there will be more, and it will be the same film again and again, same explosions, same empty nostalgic references, and no invention or development or progression of any kind; just more bastardization of the past.

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2009 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

1. Wild Grass (Alain Resnais)
2. In Comparison (Harun Farocki)
3. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)
4. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
5. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
6. Happy End (Jean-Marie & Arnaud Larrieu)
7. Rapt (Lucas Belvaux)
8. Ne change rien (Pedro Costa)
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
10. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2009 (applies to films made before the 21st century; obviously, this list will remain static.)

1. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
2. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
3. A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
4. Where is the Friend’s Home? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
5. Cria Cuervos… (Carlos Saura, 1976)
6. Train of Shadows (José Luis Guerín, 1997)
7. News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
8. The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966)
9. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987)
10. Benilde, or The Virgin Mother (Manoel de Oliveira, 1975)

Other 2009 films I’ve seen (Alphabetical)

• About Elly (Asghar Farhadi)
• Act of God (Jennifer Baichwal)
• After Last Season (Mark Region)
• Ajami (Yaron Shani & Scandar Copti)
• Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
• All Fall Down (Philip Hoffman)
• Amer (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
• The Anchorage (Anders Edström & C.W. Winter)
• Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
• Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette)
• Art & Copy (Doug Pray)
• Audition (Nelofer Pazira)
• Avatar (James Cameron)
• The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
• Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski)
• Best Worst Movie (Michael Stephenson)
• Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
• The Box (Richard Kelly)
• Bright Star (Jane Campion)
• Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar)
• Brüno (Larry Charles)
• Call of the Wild (Richard Gabai)
• Carcasses (Denis Côté)
• Cat Ladies (Christie Callan-Jones)
• Chloe (Atom Egoyan)
• A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis)
• City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan)
• Clubland (Eric Geringas)
• Coraline (Henry Selick)
• The Cove (Louie Psihoyos)
• Crab Trap (Oscar Ruiz Navia)
• Craneway Event (Tacita Dean)
• Disco and Atomic War (Jaak Kilmi)
• Disorder (Huang Weikai)
• District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)
• Double Take (Johan Grimonprez)
• Double Tide (Sharon Lockhart)
• Daniel & Ana (Michel Franco)
• Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi)
• Duplicity (Tony Gilroy)
• Eastern Plays (Kamen Kalev)
• Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
• Eden is West (Costa-Gavras)
• Eighteen (Jang Kun-jae)
• Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé)
• Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
• The Exploding Girl (Bradley Rust Gray)
• Face (Tsai Ming-liang)
• Farewell (Ditteke Mensink)
• The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Løve)
• Fig Trees (John Greyson)
• The Final Destination (David R. Ellis)
• Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
• The Forest (Piotr Dumala)
• 45365 (Bill Ross VI & Turner Ross)
• Gamer (Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor)
• General Orders No. 9 (Robert Persons)
• The Girl on the Train (André Téchiné)
• The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)
• Greetings From the Woods (Mikel Cee Karlsson)
• The Happiest Girl in the World (Radu Jude)
• A Hard Name (Alan Zweig)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)
• Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea)
• The Hole (Joe Dante)
• Humpday (Lynn Shelton)
• I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)
• I Am Not Your Friend (György Pálfi)
• I Killed My Mother (Xavier Dolan)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa)
• I Shot My Love (Tomer Heymann)
• I Went To the Zoo the Other Day (Luo Li)
• In the Loop (Armando Iannucci)
• Independencia (Raya Martin)
• The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh)
• The Invention of Dr. NakaMats (Astrup Schröder)
• Irene (Alain Cavalier)
• Jackpot (Alan Black)
• Kanikôsen (Sabu)
• Karaoke (Chris Chong Chan Fui)
• Katalin Varga (Peter Strickland)
• Kill Daddy Goodnight (Michael Glawogger)
• Kinatay (Brillante Mendoza)
• The King of Escape (Alain Guiraudie)
• La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Frederick Wiseman)
• Lebanon (Samuel Maoz)
• The Legacy (Bernard Émond)
• Let Each One Go Where He May (Ben Russell)
• Letters to Father Jacob (Klaus Härö)
• Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
• Like You Know it All (Hong Sang-soo)
• The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
• Lourdes (Jessica Hausner)
• The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson)
• Lula, Son of Brazil (Fábio Barreto & Marcelo Santiago)
• Mammoth (Lukas Moodysson)
• Mark (Mike Hoolboom)
• Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa)
• Moloch Tropical (Raoul Peck)
• Moon (Duncan Jones)
• Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
• The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello)
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog)
• No One Knows About Persian Cats (Bahman Ghobadi)
• Nothing Personal (Urszula Antoniak)
• Objectified (Gary Hustwit)
• Optical Illusions (Cristián Jiménez)
• Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
• Petropolis (Peter Mettler)
• Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve)
• P.opular S.ky (Ryan Trecartin)
• Precious (Lee Daniels)
• A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
• Public Enemies (Michael Mann)
• The Road (John Hillcoat)
• Ruhr (James Benning)
• Samson and Delilah (Warwick Tornton)
• A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• She, a Chinese (Guo Xiaolu)
• Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin)
• Spring Fever (Lou Ye)
• Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
• Sweet Rush (Andrzej Wajda)
• Symbol (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
• Tales From the Golden Age (Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, & Ioana Uricaru)
• Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola)
• The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman)
• To Die Like a Man (João Pedro Rodrigues)
• A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar)
• Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine) – 4.6
• Unmade Beds (Alexis Dos Santos)
• Up (Pete Docter)
• Vincere (Marco Bellocchio)
• Vision (Margarethe Von Trotta)
• Waste Land (Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, & João Jardim)
• Whatever Works (Woody Allen)
• Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
• Whip it (Drew Barrymore)
• White Material (Claire Denis)
• The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
• The Wind Journeys (Ciro Guerra)
• The Wolfberg Family (Axelle Ropert)
• Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat)

Antoine, which follows blind Quebecer Antoine throughout his daily routines at school and his playtime with his friends, falls short in most of its aspirations: a magical realist fantasy for children, an account of the experience of growing up or caring for the blind, or a character study of a bratty, overpriviledged adolescent. It likely would have succeeded had it focused on only one of these topics, but became a film without a goal or a purpose by cramming all of it in. Antoine is most memorable as a documentary of the fictions that children create, portraying Antoine and his friends’ hunt for a woman who turned into water as if it were a reality. It is a fun exercise that must have been a dream come true for these kids – getting a movie made about the movie world that they so clearly wish they inhabited – but it strays from the film’s focus on Antoine as a blind child. Nothing in the playtime is a product of Antoine’s disability; his imagination isn’t shown to be stronger or more/less diverse than those with vision, or really different at all from his friends. It has the same feeling as if any group of children were allowed to turn one of their imaginary games into a film, which is the same as a poorly shot fiction scripted by children: perhaps fun as a short, but not quality material to plaster a feature into.

Scenes of Antoine at school also had potential, especially when he starts telling his friends that he isn’t their friend anymore, and starts hitting some of them. This is never expounded upon by talking to the friends he wants to abandon, or Antoine’s parents to see if there are troubles at home, or even Antoine’s perspective on why he did this. We only see Antoine getting disciplined by his teacher for a couple of minutes while Antoine cries, and then the issue is never addressed again. In a film about an autistic or ADHD child, this might be acceptable, but it is too significant of a departure from Antoine’s projected behavior up to this point to let it slide under the rug. The parents also apparently wanted the documentary abandoned halfway through filming because of its effects on Antoine, but this is not detectable in the film, let alone addressed. It is yet another example of the truth being avoided for the filmmaker’s predetermined goals for the film, which is a rambling, only occassionally watchable misfire from a filmmaker who seems to only have talent for visual styling.

This film reminded me of Spurloch’s Super Size Me in that it is entertaining, has an important agenda, but takes the wrong approach to make an entirely successful documentary. It will draw crowds, it will please them, and it will probably at least get many people to stop ordering tuna at sushi restaurants, which, like Spurloch’s film getting me to nix fast food from my diet, is laudable. But this is essentially a heist film with a forced pay-off. Richard O’Barry, the protagonist, former trainer of Flipper, dolphin rights activist, wants to make Japanese fisherman out to be satanic demons of the sea, but ignores the film’s most interesting argument, which he vocally dismisses in the film: Why is killing dolphins for food in Japan any worse than killing cows, chickens, turkeys, lamb, and deer for meat everywhere else? It is very upsetting and emotionally traumatic to see the massacre of the dolphins at the end of this film, but so would it be to witness any of the inhumane ways that the aforementioned animals are killed. Psihoyos also must think that Japanese citizens (and the viewers of his film) are not very intelligent, as he shows interviews with 4 or 5 pedestrians in Tokyo who claim that they didn’t know that dolphins were killed for food, expects us to believe that this is a common ignorance. Give me a break. And then to whip out his iPhone to show them, standing on the sidewalk, footage of dolphins being slaughtered, and expect it to be telling or a revelation that these people watch the video in horror, is just manipulative filmmaking. O’Barry’s narcissism comes full circle as he blasts triumphant victory music when he walks into an International Whaling Comission meeting with a TV strapped to his body showing the footage of the dolphin slaughter, as if he has accomplished something despite all of the apathetic faces in the room who, literally, have bigger fish to fry. I like what this film wanted to say on animal rights, captivity, training, and what not, but the film blatantly ignores every other animal that is eaten (the filmmaker actually does think it is more unjust to eat a dolphin than a cow because dolphins have larger brains), as well as zoos, circuses, and what the Japanese really think about this.