Filmography
Jun. 21st, 2009 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Back during the German Film Course, I watched the first of the BDR Trilogy, The Marriage Of Maria Braun; the other two films went on the watch list, and Fassbinder is apparently a popular option for watch-on-demand in our household. I have to say that this wasn't as good as The Marriage, although in some ways it was more technically accomplished - that is, there was a lot more 'clever' camera work that set up some beautiful shots. Plenty of mirrors with the obvious implications for inner reflections of the characters and so forth.
The plot is driven by Petra Von Kant, a divorced fashion designer who falls passionately for a young woman newly arrived in the city who wants a career as a fashion model. As soon as her husband returns to Germany from Australia (no, I have no idea either), the girl goes off to him, thus jilting Petra and throwing her into a fit of despair. Eventually, after a drunken tirade at her best friend, daughter and mother on her birthday, she turns to her long-suffering secretary, Marlene, who has been the target of verbal abuse throughout the film, promising her the relationship that (we think) Marlene has been longing for - only for Marlene to pack her bags and walk out too. End film.
Suffice it to say that I think Fassbinder is not at his best when doing lesbianism. There's some investigation of triangle politics here, some jealousy narrative, the question of Marlene's silence and participation in the action as an automaton almost - not to mention the self-replicating discourse of fashion in which Petra creates herself afresh in each scene (fresh wig, fresh make-up...). But the dynamic between the characters isn't quite right; there's too much harridan-harpy-bitchness in both Petra and Karin (the model aspirant) to make the relationship work. Clearly A Bit Of A Lesbian Stereotype going there, and it does rather spoil the film.
There is, however, a pineapple. Three stars.
Little Shop of Horrors
Do you know, I'd never seen this before? I was in a foul mood, we found it on instant view (which, incidentally, I am starting to wonder how I lived without), and lo! Soon I was humming along happily. I am a sucker for a musical. This is the 1986 film directed by Frank Oz, with Rick Moranis as Seymour Krelborn and Ellen Greene as Audrey Fulquard, not to mention Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello, Audrey's swine of a boyfriend who beats her up, is generally unpleasant, rides a great big motorbike with leather jacket and appropriate greaser hair - and is, of course, a dentist by profession. He really steals the show.
Audrey II, the mysterious plant which feeds on blood and eventually demands to be fed whole humans (and to which Seymour feeds Orin, freeing Audrey up for his own romantic advances), is voiced by Levi Stubbs, and jolly good that is too. The singing is impeccable throughout, although I do wish that someone had tried to get Ellen Greene to give a bit less wince in her top notes - though this is a minor whinge. This was light-hearted, very silly, and generally Thoroughly Good Fun. I'm rather curious what the 1960 original film was like now, but I suspect I shan't investigate. I will, however, point out that Audrey's idea of the ideal home (complete with tupperware party) looks surprisingly close to our vision of hell. Four stars.
La Femme Nikita
This was a G suggestion, which I enjoyed more than I was expecting to. It is French. The general plot follows a girl taken off the streets, feral and thoroughly brutalised, who is trained to be an assassin for the French government after being arrested for murdering a police officer. We follow her through her training, her 'release' into society (where, incidentally, she has been completely under-prepared for things like shopping in a supermarket), her relationship with a cashier who wants to go into the boat building business, her assignments which become increasingly dangerous, culminating in a mission that goes completely tits up, with everyone but Nikita dead, so she makes a moonlight flit. Woven into this is her quite frankly thoroughly twisted relationship with her mentor/trainer from the assassin training school thing, who obviously has some kind of a slow burning thing for her and appears at some points to be deliberately throwing her into hot water to stop her having a happy home life with her cashier gentleman, whom he has met and obviously loathes.
It is, in a word, Very French. Even down to the shot involving a massive sun-hat and spotty sun dress. That said, the way that the tension is managed is very interesting. For instance, during a mission in Venice, Nikita has to shoot a woman out of a bathroom window while her boyfriend is waiting for her to come out of said bathroom. You don't get nervous about whether she's going to succeed in the shooting part; you worry about whether he's going to walk in and discover what's going on. I think that's why this film succeeds rather than just being another 'let's shoot people and have sparkly special effects' job - you're more interested in the interpersonal relations, which for a film involving a fireball is quite impressive. Four stars.
Stick It
I freely admit this is silly. This is good, clean, daft fun, surrounding the adventures of Haley, a gymnast who has been sent to Gymnastic Training Camp rather than a military academy. The world of gymnastics has torn her family apart, she walked out of the world competition when she discovered her mother was having an affair with her coach, and is thus loathed in gymnastic circles. However, she comes back, and eventually returns to world's - only to create a minor revolution among her fellow gymnasts in protest against the sheer ridiculous restrictiveness of the judging at the competition. So there we go.
It's actually a rather nice twist on the usual fun n' frolics that go on at this sort of thing; there's a bit of playing around with the format, and some of the characterisation goes a bit deeper than you would expect. For instance, Haley's new coach also has to cope with people judging him for who he was rather than who he is, just as she does - yes, it's a bit heavy-handed when I type it like that, but it's actually reasonably deftly thematically introduced. The social comment on the restrictiveness of the sport, not to mention the obsessiveness of the mothers involved, is also quite interesting - as is some of the personal growth that the characters are allowed to make. The bitch-template-girl is actually given a chance to develop from a complete bitch to a boy-mad not-quite-getting-it bimblet, which is a change. She's not left demolished and hopeless. She's still got a way to go, but she's actually moving.
Plus, y'know, gymnasts. And a good soundtrack. Four stars.
In The Loop
We saw this last night at BAM, and honestly, in terms of intelligent political satire, I'm pretty impressed. This is directed by Armando Iannucci, he of Radio 4 fame, and claims to follow the decision-making process around an unspecified conflict in the Middle East. The Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), makes a comment on PM (with Eddie Mair!) that "war is unforeseeable" - which, of course, it's not. He is duly bollocked by Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), a very thinly disguised Alistair Campbell with a taste for profanity and striking visual imagery, but gets pulled deeper and deeper into the whole affair, being used as a pawn by members of the US State Department. His advisor, Toby (Chris Addison), bumbles along beside him, generally screwing up as he goes - as G put it, he is a perfectly realised Oxbridge twit. James Gandolfini has an excellent turn as Lt. Gen. George Miller, an anti-war general who does his best to stop things but chickens out of resigning when push comes to shove with the UN vote; Steve Coogan is given a genius bit of casting as an irate constituent of Simon's, whose complaints about his mother's collapsing garden wall eventually give the excreable Malcolm the ability to push him before he jumps.
Two things really strike me here. Firstly, Iannucci has really taken the clash between the British and the American political systems to heart; for instance, when Toby brings Simon a call from his constituency (about said garden wall), an American completely fails to understand that yes, this really is as important for an MP as his ministerial duties. Secondly, Iannucci stays on the right side of cringe humour. You know what I mean about cringe humour, it's the sort of thing that The Office oozed, when people said awkward things in meetings and you cringed. There are moments of that in this - but Iannucci seems to know just how far he can push it. And doesn't push it an inch further. For me, as someone who really, really loathes cringe comedy, this was a revelation - that there are still people out there who don't think making people laugh is achieved by making them wince. Let's hope the trend continues. Four stars.
Back during the German Film Course, I watched the first of the BDR Trilogy, The Marriage Of Maria Braun; the other two films went on the watch list, and Fassbinder is apparently a popular option for watch-on-demand in our household. I have to say that this wasn't as good as The Marriage, although in some ways it was more technically accomplished - that is, there was a lot more 'clever' camera work that set up some beautiful shots. Plenty of mirrors with the obvious implications for inner reflections of the characters and so forth.
The plot is driven by Petra Von Kant, a divorced fashion designer who falls passionately for a young woman newly arrived in the city who wants a career as a fashion model. As soon as her husband returns to Germany from Australia (no, I have no idea either), the girl goes off to him, thus jilting Petra and throwing her into a fit of despair. Eventually, after a drunken tirade at her best friend, daughter and mother on her birthday, she turns to her long-suffering secretary, Marlene, who has been the target of verbal abuse throughout the film, promising her the relationship that (we think) Marlene has been longing for - only for Marlene to pack her bags and walk out too. End film.
Suffice it to say that I think Fassbinder is not at his best when doing lesbianism. There's some investigation of triangle politics here, some jealousy narrative, the question of Marlene's silence and participation in the action as an automaton almost - not to mention the self-replicating discourse of fashion in which Petra creates herself afresh in each scene (fresh wig, fresh make-up...). But the dynamic between the characters isn't quite right; there's too much harridan-harpy-bitchness in both Petra and Karin (the model aspirant) to make the relationship work. Clearly A Bit Of A Lesbian Stereotype going there, and it does rather spoil the film.
There is, however, a pineapple. Three stars.
Little Shop of Horrors
Do you know, I'd never seen this before? I was in a foul mood, we found it on instant view (which, incidentally, I am starting to wonder how I lived without), and lo! Soon I was humming along happily. I am a sucker for a musical. This is the 1986 film directed by Frank Oz, with Rick Moranis as Seymour Krelborn and Ellen Greene as Audrey Fulquard, not to mention Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello, Audrey's swine of a boyfriend who beats her up, is generally unpleasant, rides a great big motorbike with leather jacket and appropriate greaser hair - and is, of course, a dentist by profession. He really steals the show.
Audrey II, the mysterious plant which feeds on blood and eventually demands to be fed whole humans (and to which Seymour feeds Orin, freeing Audrey up for his own romantic advances), is voiced by Levi Stubbs, and jolly good that is too. The singing is impeccable throughout, although I do wish that someone had tried to get Ellen Greene to give a bit less wince in her top notes - though this is a minor whinge. This was light-hearted, very silly, and generally Thoroughly Good Fun. I'm rather curious what the 1960 original film was like now, but I suspect I shan't investigate. I will, however, point out that Audrey's idea of the ideal home (complete with tupperware party) looks surprisingly close to our vision of hell. Four stars.
La Femme Nikita
This was a G suggestion, which I enjoyed more than I was expecting to. It is French. The general plot follows a girl taken off the streets, feral and thoroughly brutalised, who is trained to be an assassin for the French government after being arrested for murdering a police officer. We follow her through her training, her 'release' into society (where, incidentally, she has been completely under-prepared for things like shopping in a supermarket), her relationship with a cashier who wants to go into the boat building business, her assignments which become increasingly dangerous, culminating in a mission that goes completely tits up, with everyone but Nikita dead, so she makes a moonlight flit. Woven into this is her quite frankly thoroughly twisted relationship with her mentor/trainer from the assassin training school thing, who obviously has some kind of a slow burning thing for her and appears at some points to be deliberately throwing her into hot water to stop her having a happy home life with her cashier gentleman, whom he has met and obviously loathes.
It is, in a word, Very French. Even down to the shot involving a massive sun-hat and spotty sun dress. That said, the way that the tension is managed is very interesting. For instance, during a mission in Venice, Nikita has to shoot a woman out of a bathroom window while her boyfriend is waiting for her to come out of said bathroom. You don't get nervous about whether she's going to succeed in the shooting part; you worry about whether he's going to walk in and discover what's going on. I think that's why this film succeeds rather than just being another 'let's shoot people and have sparkly special effects' job - you're more interested in the interpersonal relations, which for a film involving a fireball is quite impressive. Four stars.
Stick It
I freely admit this is silly. This is good, clean, daft fun, surrounding the adventures of Haley, a gymnast who has been sent to Gymnastic Training Camp rather than a military academy. The world of gymnastics has torn her family apart, she walked out of the world competition when she discovered her mother was having an affair with her coach, and is thus loathed in gymnastic circles. However, she comes back, and eventually returns to world's - only to create a minor revolution among her fellow gymnasts in protest against the sheer ridiculous restrictiveness of the judging at the competition. So there we go.
It's actually a rather nice twist on the usual fun n' frolics that go on at this sort of thing; there's a bit of playing around with the format, and some of the characterisation goes a bit deeper than you would expect. For instance, Haley's new coach also has to cope with people judging him for who he was rather than who he is, just as she does - yes, it's a bit heavy-handed when I type it like that, but it's actually reasonably deftly thematically introduced. The social comment on the restrictiveness of the sport, not to mention the obsessiveness of the mothers involved, is also quite interesting - as is some of the personal growth that the characters are allowed to make. The bitch-template-girl is actually given a chance to develop from a complete bitch to a boy-mad not-quite-getting-it bimblet, which is a change. She's not left demolished and hopeless. She's still got a way to go, but she's actually moving.
Plus, y'know, gymnasts. And a good soundtrack. Four stars.
In The Loop
We saw this last night at BAM, and honestly, in terms of intelligent political satire, I'm pretty impressed. This is directed by Armando Iannucci, he of Radio 4 fame, and claims to follow the decision-making process around an unspecified conflict in the Middle East. The Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), makes a comment on PM (with Eddie Mair!) that "war is unforeseeable" - which, of course, it's not. He is duly bollocked by Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), a very thinly disguised Alistair Campbell with a taste for profanity and striking visual imagery, but gets pulled deeper and deeper into the whole affair, being used as a pawn by members of the US State Department. His advisor, Toby (Chris Addison), bumbles along beside him, generally screwing up as he goes - as G put it, he is a perfectly realised Oxbridge twit. James Gandolfini has an excellent turn as Lt. Gen. George Miller, an anti-war general who does his best to stop things but chickens out of resigning when push comes to shove with the UN vote; Steve Coogan is given a genius bit of casting as an irate constituent of Simon's, whose complaints about his mother's collapsing garden wall eventually give the excreable Malcolm the ability to push him before he jumps.
Two things really strike me here. Firstly, Iannucci has really taken the clash between the British and the American political systems to heart; for instance, when Toby brings Simon a call from his constituency (about said garden wall), an American completely fails to understand that yes, this really is as important for an MP as his ministerial duties. Secondly, Iannucci stays on the right side of cringe humour. You know what I mean about cringe humour, it's the sort of thing that The Office oozed, when people said awkward things in meetings and you cringed. There are moments of that in this - but Iannucci seems to know just how far he can push it. And doesn't push it an inch further. For me, as someone who really, really loathes cringe comedy, this was a revelation - that there are still people out there who don't think making people laugh is achieved by making them wince. Let's hope the trend continues. Four stars.
