This is one of the more minimal and contemplative films that I have seen come out of the labeled “Contemplative Cinema” genre (or movement?). The film is very formally interesting, lasting barely over an hour, and having no dialogue until the 30 minute mark. The film follows a young man as he cuts down trees to sell to a pole maker and his way of life as he lives alone in a forest. I am assuming that he is a young man, but I had trouble determining his age, as his physique and worn face suggests a man in maybe his mid-thirties, but his clothes, voice, and phone call to alert his mother of his status convinced me that he is probably a teenager.

When I saw Liverpool in TIFF, Alonso was present for a Q & A and let the audience in on a bit of his process. Up to this point, his method of working consists of finding a location first, and then he develops characters and a story that he believes are evoked by that location. This is a very interesting way of working in the sense that the characters feel like they are just as important as the background and the sounds of their surroundings. When I see Liverpool again, I am sure that I will enjoy it much more with this bit of knowledge, as watching Los Muertos and now La Libertad with this in mind making the viewing experience much richer. Aided by the pacing, I am able to imagine what sort of story I would make if I had chosen the same location, and in comparing what I would do to what Alonso has crafted, I can understand him as a filmmaker more than I can many other filmmakers. Filmmakers like Alonso, David Lynch, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who sort of wear their thought processes on their sleeves are easily my favorite to watch.

I watched this Swedish vampire film with a sold out crowd in one of Toronto’s largest movie theatres, Bloor Cinema. The film has been building up a huge momentum, winning top prizes from Austin, Texas’ Fantastic Fest and New York’s Tribeca. After being disappointed that it wasn’t playing in TIFF08, I was relieved to see that it was going to be playing in late October in the closest theatre to my house.

The film is very well paced and set to a pensive and pretty, though a bit repetitive, piano score that gave the film an emotional boost that was pretty moving in a couple of different scenes. The two leads were very convincing, nothing spectacular, but better than good. The photography is a standout, if not the standout. A couple of times I felt that a scene reminded me of a Gregory Crewdson photograph; not as sci-fi, but the color and composition.

The film’s stance on vampires is pretty straightforward. No big reveals or surprises, everything is handled in a very humble, passive way. All of the standard vampire traits are present though: no sunlight, must be invited into a house, flying, blood drinking, etc. The female adoescent vampire asks her to-be boyfriend if he will still like her even if she were not a girl. His reply was a nonchalant “yes I suppose.” In this way, I felt that there was a gay tint to the film. For the boy, the only other option at this point, if this girl were to be something other than a girl, is for her to be a boy, and he doesn’t even care. Later on, when he still doesn’t know that she is a vampire, she crawls into bed with him, naked, and tells him that she is not a girl when he asks if the two of them can “go steady.” He responds that he would still like to go steady with her, even though, again, the only thing that she could be other than a girl is a boy.

The film feels a little bit long, but I was enjoying its length and wanted it to go on for longer. I found that I really enjoyed the two leads, and was reminded of childhood friends and crushes that I had when I was around 10-12 years old.

Spoilers

I saw this on a recommendation from a friend that I went to high school with. There is a lot to like about the film, it is a near perfect thriller. The only flaws I found were in a couple of slight plot contrivances, such as the guards not noticing that Fontaine, the protagonist, kept his dinner spoon, or that when he needed a second spoon, he miraculously just found one on a window ledge outside. Also, that he was fortunate enough to have the three men pacing outside who helped him so much in the beginning, and that there were frequent trains to drown out the sounds of his footsteps as he was escaping. But all of these little nitpicks stand out to me because everything else about the film is so well done.

I liked the idea of sacrifice in the film, that someone else must fail in order for someone else to succeed. Fontaine’s neighbor, Orsini, across the hall, who was at one point to be an accomplice in Fontaine’s escape, made an escape attempt on his own instead. In failing to escape and reporting to Fontaine about what went wrong, Orsini helped Fontaine to tweak his plan in order to make it successful. As Orsini’s escape attempt led to his prompt execution, Fontaine’s escape, and life after prison, is indebted to Orsini, whose initially selfish act revealed itself to be quite selfless.

There also seemed to be a lot of divine intervention. Sometimes it came across as contrived, but other times, such as the introduction of Fontaine’s cellmate Jost, it is presented as a gift not from the script, but from some sort of greater plan. Fontaine must decide whether to bring Jost with him on his escape, or to kill him and escape on his own as he had always intended. As is revealed in the final sequence of the film, Jost was not only able to escape with Fontaine, but was essential for either to do so successfully.

The title of the film adds an interesting tension to the film in a way I haven’t seen before. In proclaiming that A Man Escaped, the audience is constantly aware that the film will document a man escaping from the prison. For most of the former half of the film, it is pretty clear that Fontaine will be that man, but certain characters, such as Orsini and Jost, make who that “man” is something pretty suspenseful. When Orsini takes off on his escape, I actually found myself wanting him not to succeed, for if he was successful, it could mean that he is the “man” that escaped, and that Fontaine’s attempt is in vain. Similarly, when Jost is introduced and finally revealed to be an accomplice to the escape, there is the thought that only one of these men may escape, and it could be Jost.

All in all, a very good, very tight film that I would recommend to most people.

This was a very interesting film for about an hour, and then an uninteresting film for about half an hour, and then an embarrassing film for the final 5 minutes. I don’t like melodrama, and I do not like characters who show that they are angry by screaming, especailly if they aren’t screaming words, but just AHH!!! over and over again (see: the ending of The Mist (2007)).

The film starts off very well though. The opening scene genuinely unnerved me. Old people standing in a field at night staring into a light and crying is unnerving for me. People are introduced into unappealing situations and seem completely out of it, and not knowing the cause was much more interesting to me than when I spent more time with the characters and found that there was nothing so interesting about what was happening. There is a scene towards the end that tried to disturb me again, with a filter that inverted the scene and had people moving like wild animals. I get that as a theme for Grandieux, but this particular scene came across as a bit too art school video filter to me for it to genuinely creep me out. The many sex scenes are consistently dire.

Low lighting in nearly every scene made me feel very dirty. I felt like I was stuck in a nasty underworld of crime, prostitution, terror, and torture that most reminds me of how I felt while watching Irreversible (Noé, 2002). This was my first Grandrieux film, I have read that his Sombre (1998) and newest Un Lac are better films than this one, so I am definitely going to try and see them as soon as I can.

I’m not going to spend too much time on this one because it doesn’t deserve much. All around poorly made film. I feel like it is inexplicable that I haven’t seen the Godfather films, nor Apocalypse Now, but I find it more inexplicable that such classics were made by the director of this film, which is a bad student film with a budget. I’ve never been a huge fan of Tim Roth, and this film tells me that he shouldn’t be leading. I did watch this on Blu-Ray, so at least I was enjoying the resolution and sound design.

This is one that I will have to mull over for a few days, coming back to this post and editing it again and again as I discover new things about it (especially after I, hopefully one day, and soon, see it projected instead of a camcorder recording of the film). One thing I did know as soon as it ended though (probably before it ended) is that it is spectacular, and I am jealous of Michael Snow for creating it. Watching the “version” of it that I did, I cannot tell what aspects of it are part of the film or part of the bad presentation. I did not know certain “plot points” until I read a synopsis after it was finished, and even now I am unsure of how these elements of a story fit into the structural elements of the film.

Also, when I was trying to locate a bootlegged copy of Wavelength, I found out that he released a DVD of it a few years ago, but it is only 1/3 of its 45 minute length (he similarly truncated the title to WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don’t Have The Time)) and I can’t help but ask myself Why? Unless he is making fun of the people who would buy such a thing, I can’t see any reason for putting labor into abbreviating a work like Wavelength. Another thing is, I think that anyone who would take the time to watch 15 minutes of a slow zoom into a photograph would be willing to go for the whole nine yards and watch the whole thing. One time I watched the Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite section of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a friend out of context (just put the DVD in and skipped to that part of the film and watched it until the film ended) and I haven’t enjoyed it nearly as much as I used to since. I’m sure that a similar thing would happen for me if I ever watch WVLNT (Thinking about it, Wavelength does sort of remind me of Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite, (both were made between 1966 and 68, a coincidence?)). So I will not watch it, and don’t think anyone else should, either.

I didn’t really like McCarthy’s other incomprehensibly lauded The Station Agent, either. For The Visitor, the pedestrian dialogue is the first thing that comes to mind. and the self-righteous voice of the filmmaking. The acting is very bad with the exception of Danai Jekesai Gurira as Zainab, who is good but not great. There is no reason for me to believe that a rich, grumpy white man (Walter) who comes home to his expensive Manhattan apartment to find two non-white people living there (he hasn’t been home in a while, he teaches in Connecticut) would kick them out, and then moments later offer for them to stay for a few days. The film implies that he has a soft spot because he misses his dead Misses, but his scenes with Tarek are very phony, and the old-white-man-dancing-to-ethnic-music scenes (and there are a few) and then learning to play them (in the Subway stations, angrily, by the end of the film) all made me physically roll my eyes. Uninspired cinematography and pacing, as well as an out of place piano score, all came together to be no good.

This just isn’t very good. A film where the entire point is to make me feel like shit by piling on a worse and worse outcome for Selma. The acting, other than Bjork, who isn’t spectacular but very good for a non-actor, is awful. The only thing good about the film are the musical sequences, which have enough energy to give the film a brief 5-minute pick me up until the characters begin sobbing and screaming again. This to me is another example of how the Palme D’or just can’t get it right (Code: Unknown is one of a few better choices for 2000).

I saw Lisandro Alonso’s newest film Liverpool in the Toronto Film Festival last September and didn’t think much of it. Given all of the positive reviews it has gotten from people I trust very much, I decided that I just wasn’t in the right mood to see it. I had something very particular that was lingering on my mind for a few days, and it proved to be a very huge distraction from such a slow-paced film that relies on the viewer’s ability to contemplate the film in its open spaces and long stretches of plotlessness, and I filled those gaps with something totally unrelated to the film and its themes. So I will have to see Liverpool again (though, given that only one of his films is available on DVD with English subtitles (Los Muertos), it might be awhile before I have another opportunity).

So I decided to check out Los Muertos, since it was available to me, and also happens to be Alonso’s best reviewed film, at least until Liverpool showed up. Despite being comparably paced to Liverpool, I was very much engaged and compelled throughout the entire film, especially in the final 15 minutes. All of this was even more surprising to me since I started watching the film while I was already a bit sleepy and tucked into my bed, approaching midnight. I credit most of this to the great opening of the film, a single take that stakes a sturdy and gripping enough foundation to sustain my attention for the first 45 minutes where not much happens and not much is explained.

Alonso makes great use of his setting in the forests that surround Vargas, the protagonist. With bright green trees in every direction, the forests are alive in a way that makes the film’s title (in English, The Dead) come off as an ironic joke. As when the forest blows out into a solid green matte at one point, Vargas could almost be confused to be walking in front of a green screen.

As in Liverpool, the core of the film seems to be about the reunion that occurs between family members who have been separated over great lengths of time. The last shot, lingering on a seemingly insignificant object belonging to Vargas’ grandson, is both a symbol of the life he indirectly is responsible for, and is the first memento he has in which to associate with his new attempt at a family.

January

Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006)

Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)

Pan’s Labyrinth (Del Toro, 2006)

Wild At Heart (Lynch, 1990)

12:08 East of Bucharest (Porumboiu, 2006)

The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky, 1973)

El Topo (Jodorowsky, 1970)

Inside Man (Lee, 2006)

Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Sugg, 2005)

A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006)

Benny’s Video (Haneke, 1992)

Face/Off (Woo, 1997)

Twister (de Bont, 1996)

The Birdcage (Nichold, 1996)

The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel, 2006)

Pretty as a Picture (Keeler, 1997)

Bubba Ho-Tep (Coscarelli, 2002)

Play Time (Tati, 1967)

Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973)

True Lies (Cameron, 1994)

The Host (Bong, 2006)

The New World (Malick, 2005)

Delicatessen (Jeunet & Caro, 1991)

February

Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell, 2005)

Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)

Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)

Jesus Christ Superstar (Jewison, 1973)

The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)

Mrs. Doubtfire (Columbus, 1993)

March

Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)

INLAND EMPIRE (Lynch, 2006)

300 (Snyder, 2007)

Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)

Paris Je T’aime (Omnibus, 2006)

Stomp the Yard (White, 2007)

Fargo (Coens, 1996)

Twin Peaks Pilot (Lynch, 1990)

Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1949)

The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)

Shortbus (Mitchell, 2006)

April

Planet Terror (Rodriquez, 2007)

Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)

The Thin Red Line (Malick, 1998)

Nashville (Altman, 1975)

25th Hour (Lee, 2002)

Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)

Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)

The Sound of Music (Wise 1965)

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Stevenson, 1971)

May

Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)

Once (Carney, 2006)

The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994)

Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996)

Me and You and Everyone We Know (July, 2005)

Blissfully Yours (Weerasethakul, 2002)

Y Tu Mama Tambien (Cuaron, 2001)

The Big Lebowski (Coens, 1998)

Cache (Haneke, 2005)

The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky, 1973)

Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)

The Sandlot (Evans, 1993)

La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995)

Pi (Aronofsky, 1998)

The Fountain (Aronofsky, 2006)

L’Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962)

June

Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007)

Ocean’s 13 (Soderbergh, 2007)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Verbinski, 2007)

1408 (Håfström, 2007)

The Fountain (Aronofsky, 2006)

M. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953)

Mysterious Object at Noon (Weerasethakul, 2000)

Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)

Ghost Rider (Johnson, 2007)

Sunshine (Boyle, 2007)

SiCKO (Moore, 2007)

July

Live Free or Die Hard (Wiseman, 2007)

Ratatouille (Bird, 2007)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Yates, 2007)

Hairspray (Shankman, 2007)

Sunshine (Boyle, 2007)

SiCKO (Moore, 2007)

Dreamgirls (Condon, 2006)

Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)

Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan, 1994)

9 Songs (Winterbottom, 2004)

Because I Said So (Lehmann, 2007)

Glory Road (Gartner, 2006)

For Your Consideration (Guest, 2006)

Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)

Little Miss Sunshine (Dayton, 2006)

A Prairie Home Companion (Altman, 2006)

August

Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)

Superbad (Mottola, 2007)

Hairspray (Shankman, 2007)

Clue (Lynn, 1985)

INLAND EMPIRE (Lynch, 2006)

The Fifth Element (Besson, 1995)

Drop Dead Gorgeous (Jann, 1999)

Talk To Her (Almodovar, 2002)

American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)

How To Deal (Kilner, 2003)

September

Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul, 2006)

Eastern Promises (Cronenberg, 2007)

Across The Universe (Taymore, 2007)

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Puiu, 2007)

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (Schnabel, 2007)

The Man From London (Tarr, 2007)

Sunshine (Boyle, 2007)

The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)

L’Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962)

Maria Candelaria (Fernandez, 1944)

Amorres Perros (Innaritu, 2000)

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

October

The Darjeeling Limited (Anderson, 2007)

I’m Not There (Haynes, 2007)

No Country For Old Men (Coens, 2007)

Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou, 2007)

Things We Lost in the Fire (Bier, 2007)

Into The Wild (Penn, 2007)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik, 2007)

Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)

Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)

You Can Count On Me (Lonergan, 2000)

Hard Eight (Anderson, 1996)

Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004)

24 Hour Party People (Winterbottom, 2002)

Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)

Vidas Secas (dos Santos, 1963)

A Bout De Souffle (Godard, 1960)

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999)

Sleepaway Camp (Hiltzik, 1983)

The Blair Witch Project (Myrick, 1999)

How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (dos Santos, 1971)

Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, 1988)

November

Juno (Reitman, 2007)

Southland Tales (Kelly, 2006)

No Country For Old Men (Coens, 2007)

The Mist (Darabont, 2007)

Enchanted (Lima, 2007)

I’m Not There (Haynes, 2007)

Bye Bye Brazil (Diegues, 1979)

Strange Brew (Moranis, Thomas, 1983)

Memories of Underdevelopment (Alea, 1968)

Hairspray (Shankman, 2007)

Honey For Oshun (Solas, 2001)

The Fountain (Aronofsky, 2006)

December

The Golden Compass (Weitz, 2007)

Atonement (Wright, 2007)

Enchanted (Lima, 2007)

The Mist (Darabont, 2007)

There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)

Sweeney Todd (Burton, 2007)

Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood, 2004)

Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)

Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr, 2000)

Play Time (Tati, 1967)

About Schmidt (Payne, 2002)

Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)

Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)

Stardust (Vaughn, 2007)

A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983)