Gsc films e-m the Eagle
| Вид материала | Документы |
- Gold Circle Films представляют фильм компании Integrated Films. О фильме история США, 1307.29kb.
- Очирова Нина Васильевна Форма урок, 32.26kb.
- Private School №1, 11.92kb.
- Presents a deutsch / Open City Films, 276.73kb.
GSC Films E-M
The Eagle 2011 Kevin Macdonald 3.0 Channing Tatum as muscular, heroic officer in Roman Britain bent on saving the honor of his father’s memory; Jamie Bell as his pouty, resentful Briton slave who accompanies Channing into the North; Mark Strong as a Scottish Celt chieftain. Rousing action-adventure story about the determination of a Roman officer to travel beyond Hadrian’s Wall into Scotland (New Caledonia) to recover the eagle standard that his father had lost when the Ninth Legion disappeared there 20 years before. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the narrative is the first 20 minutes in which Channing takes over command of a far northern garrison in Britain and defends his fortress against the attacks of the barbarians; after recovering from his wounds under the care of his uncle (Donald Sutherland), he and his slave cross the wall into the wilds of Scotland, where they encounter the barbaric Seal People (their faces painted in gray), find the eagle, escape, and then once they have reunited with members of the Ninth still alive, fight them to a standstill in the midst of a mountain stream. The film is based on a famous British young adult novel. There are no female characters. What the film lacks in psychological and cultural sophistication, it makes up for in beautiful scenery, military spectacle, and effective action scenes. The scenery – filmed in Hungary and Scotland – is spectacular and convincing: the rolling hills and wide vistas in the border regions (seems more like Hungary than England), the frozen uplands and forbidding seas of the scenes in the Seal People’s village, and the close-up shots of the pristine River and moss-laden cliffs and boulders in the final battle scene. The military imagery in the first part of the film is outstanding: especially in the scene in which an alert Tatum detects movement outside the fortress and defeats the attack by lighting the pitch in the ditches on fire; and even more when he leads a detachment of disciplined soldiers into the field and they form a kind of box with their large, rectangular shields to defend some of their own that they have rescued from the Britons. All the battle scenes – perhaps particularly the final one against the Seal People in the creek – are filmed dynamically and expertly with the shrieking Britons rushing wildly at the Romans who steadfastly hold their ground. The film depicts life in the wilds outside the wall as much inferior to the relative ease and civilized sophistication of the Roman world – no image of the noble savage here; we appreciate the benefits of the pax romana. The Seal People are dirty, painted, half-naked, cruel (they kill the chief’s son for taking a toy from Tatum), and live in the most barren and forbidding of terrains. The return to the Roman city at the end is a relief after exposure to the wet, the cold, and the ugliness and cruelty of the North. Good action movie, beautiful cinematography, convincing male action hero.
East of Eden 1954 Elia Kazan (Warners) 3.0 James Dean as the “bad” son Cal, John Davalos as the rather colorless “good” son, Aron, Raymond Massey a bit solemn and serious as the Bible-reading, demanding father, Adam; Julie Harris as Abra is good although a bit over-Methodesque at times to be a simple Salinas girl; Jo Van Fleet as the mother of the twins who ran away from the controlling and demanding ways of Massey, Burl Ives as the good hearted sheriff who tries to mend the broken relationships. Sometimes brutal 50s-style family conflict: Cal feels inferior compared to his father and brother and is driven to find his mother to dig his way out of his misery; Aron is in love with Abra, but since he is somehow distracted and doesn’t demonstrate to her that he loves her, she grows increasingly close to the “dangerous” Cal, and the two boys end up slugging it out (Cal is much the better fighter); Aron’s well-being depends on thinking his mother is a deceased angel, and he melts down and runs off to join the army (World War I) when he meets her drunk and slatternly in her (profitable) Monterey whore house. Beautiful Cinemascope cinematography that puts the viewer convincingly and ravishingly in the California lettuce fields; Kazan is perhaps overly fond of tilted camera shots during tense dialogue. Film of course rises and falls with the performance and dilemmas of James Dean. Dean is very handsome, coming across as a beautiful young man that women would love to mother. His acting is Methodesque slouched over and with head bowed, muttering lines so that they are sometimes difficult to hear, sudden outbursts of rage or pain, such as when he jumps on the neck of his father after the latter refuses to accept the money he offered him (was this scene really improvised by the “brilliant” actor Dean to the surprise of Kazan and the horror of Massey who disliked Dean?), turning his back to us in key emotional moments, such as holding on to the doorknob in the dramatic $5000 scene with his mother. Cal is a confused character – he resents his father, and yet he is enthusiastic about the lettuce idea; he then gives all his bean money to his father in perhaps a guilt offering; he appears to love his brother and yet he is attracted to his fiancée and then attacks Aron viciously, etc. Film ends with a certain redemption: on his deathbed father relents and asks Cal to take care of him in place of the annoying nurse; since Aron has gone off to war, Cal gives Abra a convincing kiss and the presumption is that they will live happily ever after. Film has mildly anti-war subtext: both boys, especially Aron, are skeptical about the war, a sympathetic German immigrant character objects strenuously to the lies of anti-German propaganda and he is almost beaten up by the very people that had lived with him for decades, etc.
Eastern Promises 2007 David Cronenberg 4.0 Viggo Mortensen practically unrecognizable with gaunt features, slicked back hair, and model Russian accent as (apparently) driver for Russian mafia organization in London; Naomi Watts the innocent outsider as second generation Russian, who is present at the delivery of a baby and then makes it her mission to find the right home for her; Vincent Cassel as the psychopathic (and impotent) son of the crime boss; Armin Mueller-Stahl as the crime boss, who at first appears benevolent and sensible, but who is dangerously devious; Jerzy Skolimowsky (the Polish director) as the well-meaning Uncle Stepan. Wonderful film set in émigré crime underworld in London (written by Steven Knight of ‘Dirty Pretty Things’) about the international trade in sex slaves: a girl is drawn from her village in the Ukraine, she becomes a prostitute in London, and then pregnant dies in the beginning of the film, giving birth to a daughter. Film begins with a violent bang – a Russian hood has his throat cut by a straight razor in the barber’s chair (blood gushing forth in a stream), and then a young pregnant woman enters a pharmacy, begs for help, and promptly has a fatal hemorrhage on the floor. The latter is an active character through the film since Watts finds her diary and reads from it constantly. A lot of expertly presented plot issues keep the viewer engrossed: What will happen to the child? What kind of person really is Mortensen – just a hood or is there decency lurking beneath? Will he and Watts fall in love, and would they ever be able to get together? Riveting cinematography and editing – the dark, damp and reflective streets of London; the camera tracking behind Watts’ moving motorcycle or walking characters such as the girl walking into the pharmacy; holding the camera on a person’s face to extract a perfectly timed reaction. Characters are all interesting and presented in depth: Watts is the standard kind and gentle normal person, but we don’t tire of studying and learning more about Mortensen, Mueller-Stahl and Uncle Stepan. Terrific fight scene about three quarters of the way through the film: Mortensen, completely naked in a public bath, is attacked by Chechen hoods wielding knives and box cutters and Mortensen, whose genitalia are flapping in the fray, struggles, writhes, tumbles, and takes horrible gash wounds until the assassins are both bloody and dead. Two big surprises toward the end: knowing that he is obliged to sacrifice his only son to the Chechens, the crime boss plots to substitute Viggo for him (hence his false induction into the family and the fight in the baths); and a subsequent visit from a British police inspector informs us that Viggo is really a Russian undercover agent working with the British to infiltrate the local crime organizations. Film ends sensitively with Viggo and Watts saving the baby from being drowned by Kirill (the bastard father has ordered the baby killed because the baby’s DNA could be used to convict the father of rape), the two kissing briefly and then parting; the film ends with a scene showing the baby lovingly cared for in Watts’ family, and then another with Viggo sitting alone reading the diary next to an empty bottle of vodka. Wonderful in-depth characters, intricate yet believable plot, excellent direction, picturesque violence make this film an out-of-the-ordinary crime thriller.
East Side, West Side 1949 Mervyn Leroy 3.0 Bevy of Hollywood actors of the day: Barbara Stanwyck in for her unusual role of the rather dull, long-suffering and true wife; James Mason suave and urbane as her cad of a husband, who can’t help himself with girlfriend Gardner; Ava Gardner, statuesque and thin, but her clothes and haircut don’t do justice to her beauty; Cyd Charisse in non-dancing role as very pretty young model, who might have stolen the show from Gardner; Van Heflin pretty glamorous as young ex-cop, who falls for Stanwyck; William Conrad, Gale Sondergaard, William Frawley, and Nancy Davis in small roles. High quality soap opera that takes place in New York among four or five main characters looking for love: Stanwyck is married to “playboy” Mason, who has eyes only for the completely faithless Gardner; virtual teenager Charisse has a crush on Heflin, who in turn has a yen for Stanwyck. Everyone is frustrated. Gardner is murdered by a jealous rival; Heflin tells Charisse she is too young; Stanwyck rejects Heflin since she is still committed to her husband. Film ends with Stanwyck having had it with Mason’s infidelities and leaves him for parts unknown. Mason, who had previously carried on an innocent motivated flirtation with Sondergaard, Stanwyck’s mother, then calls her to say that he will no longer be attending their Thursday night dinners. The film has great star power, but the script seems often halting, inconsistent, and silly; it gives the impression that – like in TV soap operas – the writers were working while the film was being made, and that no one really knew what was going to happen next. Stanwyck comes across as uninteresting rather than moving and sympathetic; Gardner has little heft as the femme fatale; it doesn’t make much sense that Sondergaard would somehow manage to get along with son-in-law Mason so well for all those years despite despising him as she expresses it at the end. Mixed genre – mostly soap opera, but a weak murder mystery with Heflin investigating thrown in, and an ending where everyone is left standing alone. Entertaining to watch, however, with some dramatic moments.
The Edge of Heaven (Auf der Anderen Seite) 2007 Fatih Akin (Germany) 3.0 Nurgül Yesilcay as Ayten, the daughter of Yeter and a radical opponent of the Turkish government; Nursel Köse as her mother, a prostitute in the beginning of the movie who hooks up with…; Tuncel Kurtiz, an old fun-loving Turk living in Germany – he is the father of…; Baki Davrak, who is a professor of literature in a German university; Patrycia Ziolkowska as the childish, impulsive Lotte who becomes Ayten’s lover; Hanna Schygulla as Lotte’s ex-hippie, now-bourgeois mother who disapproves of her relationship with the Turkish girl. “Open-ended”, unpredictable, “decentered” film with several narrative lines that seem sometimes not to be connected – along the lines of “Babel”. It is about Turks and Germans, who move back and forth between their two countries. The narrative focuses at various times on the six main characters: Kurtiz at first in his courtship (?) of Kose, and then when he accidentally beats her to death; then on his son Davrak, who goes to Turkey in search of Kose’s lost daughter, but then decides to buy a bookstore and stay; then to Kose’s daughter Ayten, who is a violent anti-government activist (she has a pistol for a brief time); she flees to Germany to escape the Turkish police and is given shelter by Lotte, who then becomes her lover; Lotte is then killed by gun-happy kids in Istanbul, and the moment of absolution and reconciliation has set in – a glowing Schygulla learns to forgive Ayten, whom she has held responsible for the death of her daughter, and at the end seems to be drifting toward assuming Ayten as her daughter; and finally back to Davrak, who begins searching for his father, who has returned to Turkey after serving a prison term for the murder of his companion; although the two never meet, the film ends with Davrak waiting patiently on a beach on the Black Sea coast for his father to return from fishing (the shot is held for the whole end credits crawl). The film’s ending is partly mid-stream: Schygulla’s and Ayten’s story seems initially resolved, but the viewer never witnesses the reunion between Kurtiz and Davrak. Film sometimes packs a big emotional punch – e.g., the prediction through titles of the deaths of Yeter and Lotte and the viewer’s suspense awaiting them, the final meetings between Ayten and Schygulla – but because of its unpredictable plot turns it is sometimes difficult to empathize with events. Ultimately, the films’ theme seems to be about forgiveness and atonement: Davrak must forgive his father for the death of Kurtiz, and Schygulla must forgive Ayten for the death of her daughter Lotte. The viewer’s reaction to the film will depend on his appreciation of the “decentered” story.
An Education 2009 Lone Scherfig (Britain) 3.0 Carey Mulligan thin, simply and modestly dressed, cute, beaming, and wise for her age as 16-year-old bored stiff in 1962 London; Peter Sarsgaard a bit paunchy, but charming and apparently worldly wise as a 30-year-old who picks her up to show her the ways of the world; Alfred Molina comic as Carey’s father, not too protective since his fondest ambition is for Carey to move up in life; Olivia Williams as plain teacher in girls’ school who takes an interest in Carey; Dominic Cooper as good-looking friend of Sarsgaard; Emma Thompson in Margaret Thatcher hairdo acting forbidding as the headmistress of the school. Entertaining and sometimes moving little film about a suburban English girl living in a middle-class family in swinging London and wanting desperately to join in the excitement; Sarsgaard distracts her from her preparation for Oxford, shows her around the town, deflowers her after she turns 17 (her condition), and even asks her to marry him; but the sudden surprise is that he is married and lives just down the street from Carey’s parents; Carey, who has quit school, is devastated, but she recovers, and moves on to Oxford with the support of her parents and her teacher (Thompson is extremely reluctant to let her back in the school); she is older but wiser and she realizes that you can’t skip any steps on the way up. Sarsgaard’s personality is difficult to decipher: for most of the film he seems sincere and devoted to his teenage friend, and the revelation that he is a rank adulterer and seducer comes across as a bit extreme. The parents are amusing, especially when they themselves are seduced by Sarsgaard’s charm into believing that he is the best thing for the future of their daughter (but is it credible that they would not object to her marrying a man twice her age and about whose family they knew nothing?). The film plays with potential tragedy – Carey could have gotten pregnant, married the wrong person, and ended up living a life of desperation – but it has a happy ending with her luck holding out and not having to pay for her mistakes – the last shots of the film have her riding bicycles down the halcyon streets of Oxford and making plans for her next rip to her beloved Paris. The film works primarily because of the charm, simple beauty, and credible maturity of the teenage Mulligan; one cannot help but sympathize with her and shout at the screen that her future is the university, not that grinning jerk!
Election 1999 Alexander Payne 3.5 Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell as Tammy, Mark Harelik as the unfortunate Dave. “Wicked” and sardonic satire on high school culture and on the American electoral process; film deals with a campaign for student body president in affluent George Washington Carver High School (there are very few Blacks!). The usual high school types are depicted with great wit (Reese as the overachiever, Klein as the dumb but well meaning jock, Jessica as the counter-culture, cynical lesbian who gets herself kicked out and sent to Catholic school so she can be with girls). The electoral process is skewered by double-speak (Reese very good at that in her speeches and in her face-to-face showdown with Broderick), by campaigning strategy, by photo ops of Witherspoon photographer dropping her ballot into the ballot box. Film has equal opportunity sarcasm, since it also skewers foolish aberrant sexual behavior of adults; the funniest is Harelik as the 30s teacher who loses his job because of his sexual affair with Witherspoon – when confronted in principal’s office, tears are welling out of his eyes. Witherspoon is girl on the make, ambitious, manipulative, obsessive vixen, who turns to rage when thwarted; she is an expert comedienne. Broderick as the History and Civics teacher gives most of the voice-over (although all the main characters get their chances to talk); he is confused, good-intentioned, but stumbling over his own feet contradicting his own principles and getting into serious trouble, such as (almost) cheating on his wife, getting kicked out of the house, and getting caught falsifying the results of the student president election; and this after announcing in an early scene that he is much concerned with morals and ethics. Comic style is impeccable. Funny juxtapositions: Broderick says he is in love with Linda’s character, and camera shows him looking at her butt and her cleavage; Broderick explaining to Klein about fruit on the blackboard (a teacher!), and then cut to a bowl of fruit at his parent’s house; Broderick’s Linda-induced fantasy about being in a cool Italian sports car instead of his aging dirty sub-compact; when Broderick is down and out and everything is going wrong, even the vending machine in the cheap motel where he is staying steals his money. Music is also sardonic, e.g., some Arab-sounding wailing when there are serious passages in the film. This man has a great satirical sense of humor.
Lonely Are the Brave 1962 David Miller 3.0 Kirk Douglas as Edward Abbey latter-day cowboy trying despairingly to maintain his freedom and individuality amid the busy highways of the modern West; Walter Matthau droll and sympathetic as the sheriff who has to hunt down Douglas; William Schallert as Matthau’s competent but rather clueless deputy who operates his radio; George Kennedy as mean-as-a-snake deputy intent on doing harm to Douglas; Carroll O’Connor as big rig truck driver who runs Douglas down in the last scene. Rather predictable, black and white Kirk-Douglas-inspired film about a rootless cowboy who refuses to give in to the demands of the 1962 West (film takes place in New Mexico) and is ultimately destroyed by the modern world. Douglas, whose only real friend appears to be his often recalcitrant horse, goes to a saloon, gets himself drunk and in a nasty fight in order to be thrown in jail to see his good friend, who has been condemned for smuggling illegals across the border (draft-dodging in the Abbey book); he escapes from jail and is pursued by the authorities in the high mountains outside of town; he escapes his pursuers, but while mounted on his horse, he is hit by O’Connor’s truck on a busy highway; the viewer assumes he dies in the hospital. The film is serious and heartfelt; it seeks the sympathy of the viewer for the tragedy of an individual – the free cowboy on the open range – who refuses to knuckle under to the requirements of the modern world – permanent residence, steady job, automobiles, no fences (he cuts through them when he rides across country), marrying and settling down (he had encouraged the woman he loves to marry his friend, since he could not give her what she wanted). The cinematographer takes wonderful advantage of the mountain terrain where Douglas makes his escape: rough country, interspersed trees, cliffs, sudden drop-offs, beautiful views into the distant valley – all photographed in crisp black and white. The film, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Walsh’s ‘High Sierra’, perhaps suffers from easy predictability, and some of the sequences are hardly credible – e.g., that Douglas’ friend would still be in the drunk tank of the local jail after he had already been condemned to two years in prison (and for breaking a federal law!). The film follows the progress of O’Connor’s truck in several scenes starting in the Midwest until he hits Douglas, suggesting perhaps that the cowboy’s demise is inevitable. Performances are good, provided the viewer doesn’t object to Douglas’ take-no-prisoners acting style; Matthau is particularly entertaining in his avuncular, off-hand humor combined with a grudging admiration for the man he is chasing. Elegiac tribute to the vanished West.
Elegy 2008 Isabel Coixet 3.0 Ben Kingsley in starring role as an aging and erudite Columbia professor who has never liked relationships longer than one-night stands, but who is captivated/ obsessed by the vision of Cruz sitting in his classroom while he lectures on literary critcism; Penelope Cruz doing us the favor of disrobing twice so that we can see her breasts, but who is basically a psychological mask that we labor (in vain) to understand; Dennis Hopper excellent as wise-cracking and pretty wise handball and drinking buddy, whose premature death drives Kingsley closer to self-understanding; Patricia Clarkson effective as Kingsley’s very independent and focused fuckbuddy who is not above jealousy; Peter Sarsgaard as Kingsley’s son, who cannot forgive his father for abandoning his family when Peter was a little boy. Slow-paced rumination about love and death, about the acceptance of aging, and about eventually moving toward personal commitment and permanency. Kingsley may be allergic to romantic commitments (the sex is where it’s at), but he is sexually obsessed by his very beautiful student Cruz (very dark long hair, dark eyes, very white bleached teeth, a swelling chest under her blouse); so Amor surprisingly puts him in motion to deal with aging and lack of commitment; he resists getting to know Cruz’s family even after being together for a year and a half; she breaks off with him; but when after a couple of years she returns faced with the prospect of losing one of her breasts to cancer surgery, he is greatly affected and comes around, embracing her in the end saying “I am here”. He finds it very difficult to get past the exterior shell of beauty worn by Cruz (Hopper’s phrase) and fully to appreciate Cruz’s character and soul. In the meantime he has other small epiphanies: when his faithful friend Dennis Hopper (Kingsley’s only enduring relationship before the end of the film) has a fatal stroke, he kisses Kingsley on the lips (Ben is very embarrassed) just before he dies; and when Clarkson finds tampons in Kingsley’s bathroom (he of course lies through his teeth about their origin), she becomes furious and terminates their decades-long relationship. No doubt that Kingsley does an excellent job inhabiting Philip Roth’s character, but this reader sometimes gets tired of contemplating his craggy face and shaved head; the goateed Hopper more or less steals the scenes he had with Kingsley; Cruz often looks vacant and desirable in keeping with her role in the film as Kingsley sexual muse and the underwritten character in the screenplay. The film often movies at a glacial pace with not much happening in the frame and the viewer wondering whether he can stand another intense close-up of Kingsley’s face. The mise-en-scène is exquisite – perhaps too much so: dark stony and metallic textures, lovely balancing of volumes and shapes, semi-deep focus when useful; but one cannot escape the sense that the beauty is for its own sake and does not enhance the human qualities of the film. A score consisting mostly of Satie and Bach helps maintain a meditative, slightly depressive mood.