FILM REVIEW: Mammut (Mammoth)

Written/Directed By: Lukas Moodysson

Starring: Gael García Bernal as Leo, Michelle Williams as Ellen, Marife Necesito as Gloria

Lukas Moodysson is one of the few Swedish directors, alongside Tomas Alfredson and some other people I can’t quite remember (lolz), that has a substantial presence in contemporary ‘world cinema’ (a term that I hate for its reductionistic tendencies and American bias but that is, unfortunately, inescapable); and I make the most of every opportunity to extol the beauty of Swedish cinema. He is also the main creative force behind the best lesbian romance film in history, the gorgeously understated Fucking Amal, and has on multiple occasions been dubbed “the new Bergman” — because American film critics’ only knowledge of great Swedish films is from their essential viewing of Bergman’s overrated classic The Seventh Seal and they have no idea who Victor Sjöström or Bo Widerberg is, and because Moodysson really is one of most interesting filmmakers Sweden has ever had to offer. Naturally, the thought of praising his work while decrying the vapidity and sheer triteness of American/mainstream cinema is incredibly tempting. However, Moodysson’s Mammoth is too much of a blithering disappointment to allow that.

For one, the soundtrack is a giant fucking annoyance. Some of the tracks here are appealingly hipster-chic, but like most other directors who aren’t Sofia Coppola and have cool music taste but a poor understanding of mood, they often feel tragically inapposite and/or painfully uncomfortable. For example, when Leo finally succumbs to fucking around with a prostitute, the post-coital scene is accompanied by a bizarrely moving electronic instrumental piece, which seems to indicate that we should appreciate the romance in it, but then the sequence continues with Leo secretly, inconsiderately leaving her while she’s asleep. I understand what Moodysson is trying to do — he wants to emphasize that the romance was just an escapist fantasy, an illusion of intimacy, but he doesn’t succeed because he doesn’t understand how soundtracks work. Non-diegetic music either tells the audience how to react, or hints at a hidden emotional state. The problem is, Leo doesn’t secretly feel that his encounter is romantic — he loves his family too much to make it out to be anything more than a temporary, regrettable but necessary behavioral anomaly in an alien world, and while Leo understandably wants it to be romantic, the film and the audience are supposed to remain ambivalent, because they, as presumably intelligent entities, must acknowledge both the essentialness and wrongness of his dalliance; they can’t and don’t have Leo’s privilege of living inside the fantasy. If the music were diegetic, it would’ve both emphasized the illusory nature of Leo’s affair while effectively disengaging the audience from the romance; if there were no music, the film would allow us the space necessary to ponder the morality and reasons for Leo’s actions. Instead, Moodysson smothers us with an inappropriately romantic song choice, emptying the scene of its depth and unconvincingly invites us to revel in its aimlessness. When Leo finally returns to his family, Cat Power’s poignant “The Greatest” plays in the background (great music taste btw lolz), and there is absolutely no attempt at addressing Leo’s lack of guilt over fucking a prostitute while being away from his wife. These haphazard, bewildering uses of music (there are so many other instances, but I don’t have the effort to list them all) also parallel the tragic self-unawareness of the screenplay, which is a point I’ll revisit later on.

In the second half of the movie, home to much of the film’s overwrought drama, there are also just too many scenes where dramatic instrumental pieces manipulatively bend us over backwards to fuck the sympathy out of us. For example, when the (sadistic) grandmother brings Salvador to a junkyard where poor children are collecting trash, sad piano music plays in the background because Moodysson too wants us to feel guilty over the fact that some children have shit lives. I mean, it’s really sad that people have to live that way, but what’s even sadder is that Moodysson thinks that this is some kind of powerful revelation deserving of a lot of screentime. Part of what makes Slumdog Millionaire so wonderful is its no-nonsense depiction of Indian slums; it shows us how disgusting the living conditions are, how unsafe and horrible that world is, but the insight is always just a sidenote. The movie, above all, is a story of triumph, of destiny and love, not of how sad the world is and how bad we should feel for owning iPhones while others don’t. The world is fucking unfair, and obviously sometimes it’s really sad. But get the fuck over it. How naive can you be? This naivete brings me to my next point: White guilt.

I think this film, above all, is an unwitting (but illuminating) insight into the dynamics of white guilt. Leo travels to Bangkok, and feels overly guilty about a pretty Thai girl being a prostitute, so he hands her a shitton of money and asks her to go home to ‘sleep’, possibly because he is stupid enough to think that his money will last her a lifetime and will effectively turn her away from lucrative nights of prostitution, but probably because he is actually condescending and self-important enough to think that he alone can change the way things are in the third world. This self-importance is suggested throughout the movie when he tells the Thai whore that she SHOULDN’T EVER THINK THAT BOYS ARE GOOD WHILE GIRLS ARE NOT and when he arbitrarily declares, in laughable sincerity, that he should think about DOING CHARITY in less fortunate places, especially since he has SO much time to spare for some occasional self-serving pseudo-goodwill. Even Ellen, his wife, immediately feels bad for unintentionally discrediting the merits of Tagalog (Philippines’ national language) and spends much of the second half of the movie attempting to make herself feel better by showing her maid, Gloria, some cheap parlour tricks involving an apple pretending to be an orange. When I first saw these scenes, I immediately thought that Moodysson was cleverly, self-knowingly pointing out the laughability of white guilt. But then I realized that he was juxtaposing them with some disgusting, cringe-inducing scenes involving Gloria’s children and their oh-so-sad lives; turns out, Moodysson, in true white ignorance, doesn’t even recognize how self-important and disgusting these sympathy ploys are. Yes, people in the USA are generally quite privileged, and yes, the people in third world nations (specifically Thailand and the Philippines here) aren’t as entitled, but so fucking what? Is Moodysson so ignorant that he doesn’t realize that there are too ghettos in the US? Does he not realize that there are too privileged people in third world nations? The Bangkok that Leo first sees looks exactly like a high-budget Hollywood set, yet Moodysson seems perfectly and tragically unaware of the implications here — because he too is an unwitting advocate of self-important white guilt and first-world condescension. Think about that. Moodysson’s underlying sentiments are truly disgusting.

The worst part of the film is the Gloria character. She is such a flat, nonsensical caricature of working mothers and maids across the globe it is almost painful and infinitely insulting. We are led to believe that Leo and Ellen’s daughter, Jackie, is a stand-in for Gloria’s sons, but Gloria seems genuinely delighted by Jackie. Gloria cries dramatically (and haphazardly) practically every night when she talks to her children, and constantly talks about her inability to be away from her children (something that has understandably been interpreted as an anti-feminist statement against working mothers), but this pain is never transferred into her job, where she magically puts her pain away and savors her time with Jackie, even praising her intelligence in front of her Filipino friends and teaching her Tagalog words. This incongruity is endlessly baffling and unconvincing. Necesito doesn’t seem to understand her character’s pain, but then again perhaps it’s Moodysson’s fault for not telling her? Her character immediately reminds me of Walter Salles’ segment in the anthology film Paris, Je Taime, in which a maid too is made to take care of her employer’s child while abandoning her own — except that film effortlessly conveyed her plight, while Mammoth remains as inarticulate as Gloria is ridiculous. Also, just to add on to Moodysson’s inherent racism, the Filipino character in his film is a maid, and the Thai character in his film is a prostitute. Right on, white people. Asians so enjoy being reduced to cultural stereotypes by the ever-wonderful white gaze. BRB, STABBING MYSELF.

This film bravely attempts to style itself as a piece of world film, but fails quite miserably. While most films tend to be in one language or at most two, Mammoth ambitiously sends its characters to 3 different parts of the globe and incorporates all 3 languages into its framework. I mean, it unwisely perpetuates the myth of difference between the three peoples, but at least there is some vague attempt to highlight the universality of disconnectedness, especially in the first half of the movie. Ellen and Leo, Gloria and her sons are both separated by distance, Ellen and Jackie by Gloria and by Ellen’s job, Leo and the Thai whore by language, Leo and Bob by lifestyle. However, instead of intelligently tackling this idea of disconnectedness and disillusionment and linking it to modernity, Moodysson bizarrely uses it to make a vapid statement about privilege, which in turn completely undermines his attempts at universality. The titular mammoth ivory pen at first too seems to be a metaphor of disconnection, in that the ivory is at once tangible and intangible, physical but of unimaginable, non-existent provenance, but it turns out to be a lame statement about Leo’s privileged life, a trite declaration of first-world/third-world imbalance.

But good filmmakers have a tendency of fitting in at least a few redeeming qualities in even their worst movies. I really enjoyed the disconnectedness in the first half of the film, and had the film been about disconnectedness in a modern world, regardless of race or country, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Of course, Moodysson’s racism would’ve remained as pervasive, but still. Also, in Moodysson’s defence, the film does have a marvelous premise — it is just executed in such a ghastly, unintelligent fashion that it is indefensibly offensive. Anyway. The two leads’ performances are absolutely spectacular. I’m a huge fan of Gael García Bernal, an ex-teen idol from Mexico turned critical darling with Alfonso Cuáron’s fantastic Y Tu Mamá También turned perennial supporting actor in an assemblage of Oscar-nominated films, and here he is absolutely spot-on in playing the awkward, guilt-ridden Leo, who is dreamily attractive but subtly awkward, child-like but tentatively assertive. It’s a gloriously strange, believable character that for once humanizes the Hot Male Lead, and it’s really, really sad that Bernal’s magnificent creation will be ignored because of Moodysson’s sub-par efforts. Michelle Williams, probably the most exciting actress today, is as always, unstoppably eclipsing and achingly humane. There is nothing she can’t do, except save this film (lolz).

KevinScale Rating: 1.5/5

FILM ANTHOLOGY REVIEW: Paris je t’aime

Film anthologies invariably suffer from the same problems of stylistic, tonal and thematic inconsistency, and Paris, Je T’aime is certainly no exception. Often, brilliant films are placed nonchalantly next to shitty ones, and self-serious tragedy is juxtaposed awkwardly with ironic farce. But even if one were to be a fan of anthology serials, this one is still weighed down too heavily by its generous proportion of fillers to be considered any more than the sum of its parts. To be fair, there are a few solid gems in here, but one can only appreciate them if one has the patience to sit through a lot of inconsequential, amateur film fare. I’ll be reviewing individual segments before I give an overall score.

Tom Twyker’s “Faubourg Saint-Denis”: An American actress romances a blind French student, who feels like he is undeserving of love and worries that she will leave him.

The film opens promisingly enough with an intriguing premise and humane characters, and even manages to stuff in enough stylistic flourishes necessary to establish a distinct artistic identity. Of course, this shouldn’t really come as any surprise because Tom Twyker is one of the most talented directors in the world today. His magnum opus Run Lola Run, for one, was also equally fast-paced and stylistically distinct with a richly painted protagonist to boot. However, while that film was a breathtaking, thrilling ride with a powerful emotional payoff, this film is weighed down too much by clumsy, prolonged sequences that completely eschew substance for style. There are simply too many stupid fast-forwarded scenes with the two protagonists hugging/facing away, as though we need a full minute of inconsequential emphasis to understand what Twyker is trying to get at. Twyker seems to be illustrating a world in perpetual motion and lamenting how it is too fast to appreciate love, but the ending is so painfully flat that this sentiment just blows up and starts spontaneously emitting foul odors.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 2.5/5

Richard LaGravanese’s “Pigalle”:  An old married man turns to a prostitute for advice on pleasing his wife.

This short film takes unexpected turns and culminates in a very warm, sentimental emotional climax, and never once feels contrived or artificial. LaGravanese is a director who understands the beauty of love between a long-married couple, and who also understands that it’s a struggle to constantly keep up with one’s other half when they are permanently suspended in a perpetual state of flux. Oh and it’s also a fine demonstration of how one can use the same song twice in a single short film without making the audience tire of it. I just don’t see how Paris is necessarily a backdrop for this film to work, and that definitely weighs it down because um…it’s supposed to be a film in an anthology about Paris.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 4/5

Christopher Doyle’s “Porte de Choisy”: Elderly white salesman tries to pitch beauty aids in Chinatown

Doyle appropriates Kung Fu Hustle-esque camp and revels in absurdity, non-sequitors and over-the-top melodrama in this farcical look at Parisian Chinatown. It’s definitely the most amusing piece in the anthology, even if it is far from the best. In retrospect, this film is an incoherent mess that is saved only by its entertainment factor. It’s a pleasant reprieve from the other self-serious/awful films, but never really becomes anything more than a good piece of filler. There is no distinguishable plot progression, the characters are utterly ridiculous and the ending seems like an overtly desperate attempt to fit “Paris, Je T’aime” into the film.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 3/5

Alfonso Cuarón’s “Parc Monceau”: An elderly man and a young woman engage in an argument that suggests they are having an illicit affair when they are in fact father and daughter.

It has a pretty cool twist, but is ultimately inconsequential and aimless. Are we supposed to be impressed by it simply because it takes one unexpected move? At the end of the film, the twist fails to bring any deeper meaning to the context of the film, and everything just falls flat and watching it becomes a fantastic waste of time.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 1.5/5

Animator Sylvain Chomet’s “Tour Eiffel”: A child recalls how his parents — who, incidentally, are both mimes — met in prison.

This is a fantastic sequence, because it is not only a deeply moving homage to silent film and physical comedy, but because it effortlessly and stylishly transforms its premise into a triumphant irony. Much of the film’s humor is derived from the mime’s lack of self-consciousness and the flat-out absurdity of his cheerfulness, but by the end we realize that we ourselves are the absurdity and that the world of the mime was real — and magical — all along. It also has a very gracious screenplay that is unequivocally more intelligent and self-aware than its audience, but that has the grace to not be bitchy about it.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 5/5

Gurinder Chadha’s “Quais de Seine”: A young white kid develops feelings for an attractive Muslim woman.

This is a very tender piece, and the scene where the female protagonist talks about faith and beauty is genuinely wonderful, but the beginning feels like a wasted sequence, and the ending, while pretty, is not sufficient to make this any more than a pleasant filler.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 3/5

Gus Van Sant’s “Le Marais”: A French man becomes convinced that a muted but attractive gent who works in a print shop is his soulmate.

Gus Van Sant is a veteran at painting moving portraits of unrequited love. “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” both have richly written, emotionally stunted protagonists who desperately want to reach out for love but who are too damaged to allow themselves to do so. In this short, Van Sant’s source material/plot is much weaker than that of his full-length features, but the powerful script and subtle use of silence are clever enough to make this work.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 4/5

Isabel Coixet’s “Bastille”: A man about to leave his wife for his mistress finds out that she is dying of terminal cancer, and rediscovers his love for her.

This is a moving piece, but it is weighed down heavily by the omnipresent, deadpan narration, the lack of irony and the stupid ending.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 2/5

Nobuhiro Suwa’s “Place des Victoires”: A grieving mother rediscovers the importance of life by dealing with her son’s death.

This is a short film with little substance, but that knows its way around sentimentality. Watch this only for Juliette Binoche’s characteristically poignant performance.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 3/5

Gérard Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin’s “Quartier Latin”: A long-married couple meet amiably in a bar for the last time before their official divorce.

This is a very mature and funny short film, and while unoriginal and unmemorable, it is warm and well-executed. The best filler piece in this anthology.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 3.5/5

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Tuileries”: A tourist learns a lesson about local etiquette in the Paris Metro.

Admittedly, it’s very difficult to make a 5-minute short feel like a complete film, but the Coen Brothers have masterfully imbued their piece with enough visual style, thematic depth and farcical absurdity to make it an instant standout. This is essentially a film about being an outsider and about trying to negotiate the coordinates of foreign culture, and the Coen Brothers make this problem an entertaining ride by filtering Paris through the fearful, lonely and subjective eyes of Steve Buscemi — who incidentally gives a marvelous performance as a helpless, hapless tourist. It gives new meaning to Mona Lisa’s smile and Paris’ claim to the “City of Love”. It makes complete use of its subway setting. It mocks the tourist agenda. It mocks urban France. Undoubtedly, the best film in the anthology.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 5/5

Walter Salles’ “Loin du 16ème”: A Columbian housekeeper longs for her own child as she tends to the infant of her wealthy employer.

Too much transitional shots without a satisfactory emotional payoff. Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” too has many scenes where Johnny Marco, the film’s protagonist, drifts aimlessly through wordless silence, but at least it was grounded in Marco’s real, tender (albeit dysfunctional) relationship with his daughter Cleo. Here, the film focuses too much on the pain of a housekeeper we are given no time to relate to. Salles is a brilliant director with a distinct artistic vision, but as is the case sometimes with talented directors, he doesn’t really know how to compress his ideas into a short film, and ends up with lackluster results. Doesn’t feel like a filler piece, but it’s not good enough to warrant any praise.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 2.5/5

Vincenzo Natali’s “Quartier de la Madeleine”: A young man falls for a vampire upon seeing her dead victim.

Humorless garbage without an ounce of self-awareness or irony. Elijah Wood can do so much better…than those sideburns.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 0.5/5

Wes Craven’s “Père-Lachaise”: A hopefully humorless, engaged young man receives a humor lesson from the spirit of Oscar Wilde that saves his marriage.

Pointless. And Oscar Wilde is Irish. Bad even for a filler piece.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 1/5

Alexander Payne’s “14th Arrondissement”: An elderly postal worker shares her opinions on Paris.

Funny, warm and embracing with a brilliantly written narration. Would’ve liked it more if it wasn’t as self-indulgent or if the narrative was occasionally broken by Annie Hall-esque magic realism.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 4.5/5

Oliver Schmitz’s “Place des Fêtes”: A dying Nigerian man romances a paramedic.

Aims to portray the aches of unrequited love but just ends up as a pointless exercise in pointlessness.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 2/5

Bruno Podalydès’ “Montmartre”: A single, lonely man chances upon a beautiful stranger in need of his help.

This film opened the anthology, and actually made me believe that Paris, Je T’aime could possibly be good. It’s a very personal short, and the romantic tension between the two leads is surprisingly kept nicely under wraps. The subtlety is endearing and the male lead is fantastic. However, it never actually becomes more than a good intro that presents the possibility of finding love in Paris.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 3.5/5

Olivier Assayas’ “Quartier des Enfants Rouges”: An American actress in a costume drama attempts to romance her drug dealer.

I didn’t get this. The scenes of the drug dealer following the female lead around is kind of endearing, but then it collapsed into an aimless showcase of what appeared to be the set of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. I didn’t get this.

Segment KevinScale Rating: 1/5

There were a few great pieces, a few good ones, and a lot of fillers in between. But what’s worse is that a fair number of films bear too obviously the artistic stamp of their directors (The Coen Brothers’ and Walter Salles’ films are particularly recognizable), and this completely disrupts the tonal flow of the anthology series. Also, the fillers are too bad for this series to be taken seriously.

Overall KevinScale Rating: 2.5/5

FILM REVIEW: Midnight In Paris

Directed/Written By: Woody Allen

Starring: Owen Wilson as Gil, Rachel McAdams as Inez, Marion Cotillard as Adriana

Latter-day Woody Allen — and this distinction from early-day Annie Hall Woody Allen is important, I think — is a writer-director whose films are often compulsively indulgent portraits of upper-class Europe. In Vicki Cristina Barcelona, his protagonists attend art galleries, spend long vacations in exotic locales and embark on oh-so-treacherous journeys of self-discovery — seemingly because they have little to occupy their time. In Match Point, his characters spend their free time attending more art galleries, ruminating over Dostoyevskian existentialist philosophy, attend operas in the best theaters and in the best seats, and casually collecting vintage cars. In his latest film Midnight In Paris, his characters too attend exclusive art galleries, flaunt their knowledge of philosophical pseudo-intellectualisms, live in premier lodgings, and sulk over not being adequately knowledgeable in art history. Now, I’m not particularly opposed to films revolving around ‘upper-class’ interest (Kiarostami’s Certified Copy has a script simply overflowing with bourgeois philosophical banter, and I love it 4realz), neither am I films that are brimming with artsy esoterica (in Match Point, the purposeful detailing of bourgeois life is actually fundamental in the film’s goal to expose the underlying primitivity of the cultured individual). But Midnight In Paris is both aimlessly pretentious and gratuitously esoteric — a film that sucks up to pseudo-intellectuals and performs the hitherto impossible task of baffling both idiots and intellectuals alike.

The film’s very premise is esoteric in nature: Gil travels back to 1920s Paris and meets up with iconic artists such as Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Luis Bunuel et al. For anyone who doesn’t know them, Allen’s not-so-carefully embedded network of references would prove meaningless. Dali’s vision of a subject with “only one tear down the cheek”, for instance, is a reference to the surrealistic tradition of embracing asymmetry. Naturally, people who take pride in flaunting their knowledge would laugh at this point — even though getting the reference does not actually translate to some underlying joke. Those who don’t get the reference would not laugh because they don’t get the ‘joke’, and those who have an equal wealth of knowledge and intelligence would not laugh either — because there is no joke to begin with. I think this basically exemplifies what I don’t like about much of the humor in the film: it brings out the self-important know-it-all in semi-knowledgeable people, and gives them an opportunity to laugh and feel special. Even his dialogue feels awkwardly pretentious:

Inez: Come on, we should quit the ‘idle chatter’ because we’re gonna be late.

Inez’s Mom: ‘Nevertheless’, I don’t think your idea of having him followed is very practical.

Of course, if the film had then gone on to knowingly mock this brand of pretentious bullshit — in true George Carlin fashion –I would be totes in love with it. After all, Allen’s films work best when they are self-aware; Allen’s magnum opus Annie Hall succeeds mostly because of his self-deprecating dissection of Alvy Singer’s neuroticism. But Midnight In Paris has a script that seems genuinely unaware of its cringe factor.

But even if I were okay with Allen’s pretentious execution, why on earth would witnessing the rivalry between Zelda Fitzgerald and Hemingway, or listening to Cole Porter singing a song be particularly interesting? As an audience, we understand Gil’s fascination of watching his idols come to life. But we also know that we’re watching a film, and therefore hardly share his excitement. The history trips would’ve been so much more interesting if the film had debunked some myths surrounding the icons portrayed, or if some revisionist element were introduced. I mean, Allen’s caricatures of Hemingway (‘the tortured artist’) and Dali (‘the eccentric genius’) were occasionally entertaining, but they aren’t enough to make Gil’s ‘magical’ trips…well, magical.

And even though the film is already by nature extremely esoteric, Allen makes a lot of bewildering concessions that come across as half-hearted and overly simplistic. The inclusion of Dali and Bunuel to make a fantastically general point about surrealism and how it expands the imagination is, for one, incredibly insulting. I assume Allen deliberately chose to bring them both into the movie at the same time because of their collaboration on the arthouse tour de force Un Chien Andalou, but there is no explicit exploration of that suggestion here. Allen simply raises a possibility, then shits all over it. Bravo, Woody Allen. Bravo.

The plot of the film is also offensively predictable for any filmmaker, let alone Woody Allen. It begins with Inez dismissing Gil’s romantic fantasies of Paris-in-the-rain, proceeds with making Inez look like a total bitch, introduces Gabrielle (as sweet and beautiful as Parisians get), introduces Adriana (the quintessentially enigmatic beauty that never ends up with the likeable protagonist), breaks up Gil and Inez (as though we never saw it coming), and ends with Gil and Gabrielle walking (IN THE RAIN) towards a happy, happy future of perpetual nostalgia. Sometimes, predictability of plot is comforting – as it is in Lars and the Real Girl, or City Lights – but at other times (like in Midnight In Paris), it is off-putting, anti-climactic and just plain boring.

The philosophical ramblings in the film are hardly worthy of an intellectual of Allen’s stature either. The intellectual premise of the film is firmly grounded in the problem of existential disillusionment, which is something that has been consistently explored in his works. However, Allen fails to explore this thematic framework as powerfully as he does in Match Point, or as ambivalently as he does in Vicki Cristina Barcelona. Instead, he skirts around the topic like he has nothing much to say, aimlessly invokes various discursive concepts like ‘Golden Age Thinking’, then descends into brainless camp and saccharine sentimentality. Admittedly, nostalgia as a manifestation of a perpetual dissatisfaction with the present is an intriguing premise, but without development and/or exploration, it is neither interesting nor powerful enough to sustain an entire movie. Often, the ‘intellectual’ banter here comes across as a very watered-down, dumbed-down Bergman ripoff. Unless you’re inventive, articulate and skilful enough to make intellectualism something accessible (as Bergman does effortlessly), um…don’t do it kthx xoxo

I’m not finished complaining though; the character development here is awful too. Inez, for one, is shockingly superficial. In Match Point, where Scarlett Johannsen basically plays a variation of Inez, her death necessitates our sympathy. Therefore, she is allowed to be as whiny and needy as possible, because no matter what she does, we will still be on her side mourning for her. Here, however, there is no attempt to humanize Inez at all. She whines constantly. She belittles Gil everytime she has a line. She sucks up to ‘pseudo-intellectual’ Paul. She almost accuses the hotel maid of stealing. She doesn’t even feel sad when Gil breaks up with her. She just whines some more. Belittles some more. Bitches some more. But it’s not just her. Everyone apart from Gil is flat and unrealistic. Paul has the potential to become a wonderful character, but Allen cruelly obliterates him from the film after the first half, as though he himself wants the film to become a total dud. Thankfully, though, this film does have some redeeming factors.

Owen Wilson, best known for his invariable slapstick shtick in countless B-rated critical bombs, is quite wonderful here. He captures the Woody Allen persona with incredible accuracy and performs the remarkable task of imitation without ever once descending into unintentional parody. Wilson’s Gil is brimming with introverted tentativeness and ambivalent self-effacement, possesses a genuine fascination for the world, and awkwardly asserts his presence with an artist’s pride. His performance is endlessly marvelous and effortlessly funny, and I’m genuinely surprised he didn’t manage to garner an Oscar nomination for it. Adrien Brody’s campy cameo as Salvador Dali is pretty awesome too; it’s just a shame his role wasn’t particularly huge.

As always with latter-day Allen films, Allen’s use of music is exquisite and his cinematography is stunning. The ending, which is uncharacteristically sweet and pretty, is also a wonderful thing in itself — even if it is an inadequate apology for an awful film.

Ultimately, this movie is bearable, pseudo-intellectual fodder that reads and feels like a Woody Allen film; it’s just not a very good one. Not a very good one at all.

KevinScale Rating: 2.5/5

FILM REVIEW: Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster

Directed By: Wilson Yip

Written By: Edmond Wong

Starring: Donnie Yen as Ip Man, Sammo Hung as Master Hong, Hwang Xiaoming as Wong Leung

Yes, please don’t die of surprise, I actually do watch Chinese films — even if they are often one-dimensional, self-serious, melodramatic bullshit — like this one (OH SNAP).

The first half of this film is particularly wonderful. Ip Man tries to get students, but they’ll only be his students if he can beat them. *cue fight scene* One of his disciples then gets into a fight with students from another martial arts sect *cue fight scene* but they play dirty and take him hostage. Naturally, Ip Man comes to rescue him — but a fuckton of students come to beat him up *cue fight scene*. Sammo Hung, ugly unkempt beard and fats and all, then makes Ip Man fight some martial arts teachers (including himself) to legitimize his authority *cue fight scenes on a table*. So yeah. That’s the first one hour of the movie: episodic fight scenes clumsily strung together with unconvincing transitions masquerading as justifications of some sort — which is bewilderingly ironic considering how emphatically the film underscores Ip Man’s general aversion to gratuitous violence.

The character development in the first half of the film is equally abysmal. I can almost deal with Ip Man’s students being portrayed as hot-headed testosterone-charged lunatics who should be made to pay fines for committing killer-litter, but I can’t deal with Wong Leung – the de facto leader of the lot – being an equally humorless, self-serious fucker. There is a marvelous 4-5second scene towards the end of the first half where Ip Man makes fun of Leung’s self-seriousness, but that scene alone is just painfully inadequate in compensating for a hopelessly shitty writing job. Ip Man’s wife here hasn’t changed much from the first movie, which means that she is still just an annoying bitch who complains with a vengeance. When she’s not complaining, she’s busy proclaiming her pseudo-noble intentions (she insists on not disturbing Ip Man when she gives birth), which in turn just makes her even more annoying. Can’t you just suffer in peace? Bigger things are going on here. Like Chinese pride and Chinese culture and Chinese integrity and Chinese dignity and shit. But I’ll get to that. Apart from rare bursts of wit, the other Kung Fu masters are generally devoid of personality. Master Hong, who apparently is the Queen Bitch (omg David Bowie reference) of Hong Kong, and who we are apparently supposed to give a shit about, mostly just gets by with angry glares and sour expressions. Mucho depth right hurr. Oh and someone really has to talk about the Western police chief guy. He’s only featured twice in the first half of the film, and in both scenes he is portrayed as an unsympathetic asshole who asserts some contrived form of Western superiority on the struggling Chinese working-class. There is an obvious, if painfully weak and/or unintentional, attempt to humanize him (the fat Chinese guy with weak eyebrows says something to the effect of THE WHITE BOY ALWAYS AVOIDS THE SUBJECT — as though subtly implying that he also has his own superiors to answer to) but this is completely undermined by the outrageously offensive second half of the film.

Then again, character depth has never been the strong suit of Chinese films, so maybe I’m just expecting too much. Fair enough. But what about the cinematography? If the character and plot developments are both shitty, surely the cinematography must be sufficiently compensatory? NO. The cinematography here is painfully uninspired. For dramatic effect, the camera swirls and zooms in. In preparation for a fight, the camera swirls and zooms out. To emphasize on the intimacy between two people, a classic medium two shot is used. So. Fucking. Boring. Where’s Zhao Xiaoding when you need him? 😦 I think the only scenes where there was anything remotely interesting going on were the ones in the boxing ring, in which Wilson Yip almost certainly took his cues from Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. Problem is, the strong fluorescent lighting here is not nearly as powerful or as unforgiving as those in “The Ram”‘s last match, and Yip’s intended effect just falls flat. Also, the use of jump cuts to draw parallels between Ip Man and Master Hong is a tragically obvious thing to do. There’s a lot of self-plagiarism going on here too. The use of slow-motion, and the interspersion of fight scenes with Ip Man rehearsing with his wooden man thing, which were already used ad nauseum in the first film, are both back with a moribund, anticlimactic vengeance.  MEH. Anyway, let’s move on to the second half of the film — or as I like to call it, xenophobic, self-aggrandizing trash.

Suddenly, “Twister”, British boxer (with a generalized Australian accent) insults Chinese people (“So this is Chinese boxing? You should stick to dancing”), makes a lot of Chinese people angry, and paves the way for a shitton of mediocre scriptwriting.

Sample lines:

Twister: The winners have to apologize to the losers? If I had to do that, I would have to apologize EVERY DAY.

Twister: BE WARNED. I WILL NOT HOLD BACK.

Twister: By the time this thing has burnt to the end, there will be no more Chinese boxers, BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE KILLED THEM ALL.

Twister: …I doubt that there’s any Chinese “fella” who has the guts to get in the ring with me.

Emcee (speaking for Ip Man): Although people have different status [sic] in life, he doesn’t believe that one person’s integrity is worth more than another’s.

*Vomits into a biodegradable paper bag*

Twister’s lines are mostly just extraordinarily silly attempts to incite hatred towards a person we already know we shouldn’t like. They are also written in extraordinarily bad grammar. Now, I’m not unreasonable — I don’t think Edmond should be expected to conquer English all on his own. But perhaps a translator? Or someone who can speak English? With some remote semblance of grammatical competency? I dunno, maybe that’s a silly suggestion. Silly me. Gigglez.

There are a lot of moments in this movie that could’ve been developed into interesting scenes, but Wilson Yip seems genuinely content with superficiality. The half-time scene when the white guy is given water, a bucket and a mouthguard, for example, could’ve been an opportunity to transform a weak contrast between the two cultures into a dryly/awkwardly funny scene. The scantily-clad girls who signal for the commencement of the matches could’ve been made into complex metaphorical representations of the movie itself (in its appeal to the Western predilection for non-stop action) or a symbol of some kind, but instead they just act as clumsy, lazy transitions between matches. This indifferent acceptance of sluts is also offensively ironic in a film that presents itself as a pseudo-exercise in pro-Chinese nationalism. The slo-mo close-ups of Master Hong having the shit beaten out of him are irritatingly redundant. DO YOU WANT US TO HATE WESTERNERS THAT MUCH? I mean, it is already clear from the very premise of the movie that we’re supposed to be siding with Hong, so why the attempts to garner even MORE sympathy? Just in case we’re too stupid to realize that? Or because the scriptwriter is? Why not take cues from Breaking Bad and focus instead on the blood dripping on the floor? WHY EMPHASIZE THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY OBVIOUS. We already know that Master Hong is going to lose, because Ip Man has to have the final battle and everyone is talking about Hong’s ASTHMA ATTACK, so why the slo-mo suspense bullshit? Oh right. Because this is a movie that caters to half-wits #lulz. The overhead shot of all the Chinese people rushing in and crowding Master Hong’s corpse while Twister celebrates alone could’ve been a stunning shot, but instead the director chooses to make it slo-mo and fade out into black. Seriously? What the fuck. There’s absolutely no appreciation for subtlety or depth. It is as though Yip here concedes that YES, the storyline really is simply a transition into fight scenes.

The sound editing here is also quite awful:

*cue orchestral bombast after Ip Man challenges Twister to a fight?*

*cue low, bad-boy electronic drones with sparse, hollow drums whenever Westerners do something bad*

*cue the same music when fat Chinese man siding with Westerners does something bad*

*cue the same music when fat Chinese man siding with Westerners does something good*

Where’s David Lynch when you need him? 😦

The film’s only saving grace is Donnie Yen, who plays Ip Man with unflappable calmness, self-effacing affability and quiet resignation. Also, the Chinese people drowning out the English-speaking emcee during the countdown to Ip Man’s win would’ve truly been something to behold — if only the film didn’t try so hard to make me hate it.

KevinScale Rating: 2/5

FILM REVIEW: Monster

So this is the film that transformed Charlize Theron from this:

I know, life's so unfair *insert self-pitying rant* 😦

into this:

But to distract our readers (there are 2 of them now, I believe… *smug look*) with the wonders of make-up would be downright boring. So lez (omg see what I did there? cuz she plays a lesbiany woman? lulz) get down to bizness.

Monster is a film that works primarily because of the strength of CT’s performance (since referring to Charlize Theron by her surname might be too much for our Theron to handle). Like most other indie movies, it boasts an unremarkable cinematography; the camera is mostly static, occasionally shaky and sometimes zooms a little to manipulate the viewers into some sort of sympathetic reaction. The script is straightforward and unpretentious. The production is obvs low-budget. Most characteristically, there is no distinctive artistic direction, no commendable directorial style. Everything just leads to the next scene, and there are no self-conscious attempts to uncover some hidden psychological agenda. In many cases, such indie films are easily dismissed as trite and unmemorable – often because they are not bolstered by strong lead performances – but Monster contains one of the greatest performances of the 2000s. Naturally, this is not a film that allows itself to be forgotten.

CT loses herself completely in Wuornos’ insecurities, fears and awkward tough-girl charm. Her performance is fearless, unpretentious and unsympathetic, and it is precisely because it is executed with a certain casual abandon, a certain disregard for audience reaction, that we (with grudging difficulty) see Wuornos as a victim of circumstance. I can’t comment on a flawless, faultless performance.

Christina Ricci as Wuornos’ child-like lover, Selby, is annoying and unconvincing, and the script does little to salvage this disaster. Wuornos’ real-life lover was actually named Tyria Moore; I presume the name-change was either to prevent a potential lawsuit in case of misrepresentation or to allow more room for intricate character dynamics. However, Ricci’s one-note performance as a whiny, unsympathetic little bitch exposes Selby as a superficial plot device that wails, complains, pouts and weeps loudly enough for Wuornos to do something about it, but not politely enough for us to actually give a fuck. Selby would actually make a wonderful opportunity to examine the philosophical dilemma in judging serial killers, but Patty Jenkins (the writer/director) seems more interested in making a big deal out of Selby’s lesbianism than in dissecting her inability to negotiate her feelings for Wuornos. And while Selby’s lesbianism is admittedly a good starting point for the sub-plot about Selby wanting a social life and acceptance, it has no bearing on the overall quality or complexity of the film, and comes across as a rather haphazard focal point stemming from a half-hearted attempt to prevent Monster from collapsing into a self-indulgent sympathy plea. Ironically, when Selby does achieve some kind of productive function (that is, when she is ignoring Wuornos or crying for arbitrary reasons), she just serves to heighten our sympathy for Wuornos – a woman who has little to love, who loves fiercely, and whose love has never truly been reciprocated.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely get how Jenkins wanted Selby to be the child and Wuornos the matronly serial killer girlfriend, but their relationship remains painfully unconvincing – mostly because Selby is a horribly-acted and horribly-written character. Throughout the film, Jenkins goes all out to insist that their relationship works because Selby loves Wuornos and Wuornos needs to feel loved. But Selby doesn’t really seem to love Wuornos at all. When CT breaks down into spectacular displays of emotional instability, Ricci’s Selby is distant and watchful, as though Ricci has completely eschewed all efforts to stay in character because she’d much rather marvel in silent awe at CT’s talent. When CT says that she loves Ricci, you feel her hitherto solid tough-girl sheen breaking down, and you can feel her love drowning out the scene like an uncontainable tidal wave. When Ricci replies, you don’t feel anything. It feels like something to say because the script expects her to. Additionally, the ending feels contrived and deliberately cruel, as though Jenkins is uncertain of CT’s ability to garner sympathy, so writes a scene to ascertain Wuornos’ status as victim by making Selby wordlessly attest to Wuornos’ deeds while more sentimental music plays in the background. While the script is often sensible (Jenkins smartly avoids any melodramatic lamentations by making Wuornos describe her childhood sufferings in comfortable, informal settings in an insidious build-up to the climatic first kill scene), the trial sequence is just awful.

Furthermore, I feel like a lot of things are left unexplained in the film; ironically, a lot of them would have helped paint a more sympathetic portrait of Wuornos – something that Jenkins obviously had aspired to do. After reading up on some stuff about Wuornos, it is very apparent that she wanted her lover to testify against her to protect her interests and keep her out of jail. The film almost completely disregards this fact, and makes Selby seem like a two-headed bitch/culprit. In an interview conducted days before her execution, Wuornos articulates her conviction that she was the victim of some elaborate conspiracy theory. In the closing sequence, CT’s Wuornos too demonstrates a firm awareness that Selby is in on some kind of scheme to convict her. It seems almost poetic that Wuornos, for all her instability and utter insanity, was right all along; it’s just sad that Jenkins chose to leave this stunning piece of irony out. Which brings me to my next point.

With this kind of stuff, it’s very easy to mistake brilliant acting for good filmmaking. Admittedly, I too was tempted to give this film a high score. But after watching it again, it became clear to me that Jenkins is an unfocused director who made many bad directorial decisions that inevitably exposed her understanding of Wuornos as superficial and peripheral. She tries too hard to make Wuornos sympathetic, because she doesn’t know what else she wants her film to convey. She tries too hard to carve new depth with Selby, but doesn’t really know the purpose of doing so. Ultimately, what we have here is an intellectually un-challenging film about an intellectual challenge. With a stronger script and a stronger cast of supporting actors, Jenkins’ direction could potentially become something genuinely great. Just watch this for CT.

KevinScale Rating: 3.5/5