Rabbit-Proof Fence is one of the stranger movies I’ve seen recently. It takes a relatively obscure (for most audiences, and perhaps even Australians) historical subject and treats it relatively straightforwardly, yet it feels like scorched-earth science fiction. The film has an aura of foreignness, a curious distance, that makes it seem unreal.
Just as Pulp Fiction spawned a number of crude imitations, it appears that Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves has inspired young filmmakers to mimic his bleak depictions of degradation. The British film Under the Skin brings with it the affectations of von Trier’s film – the hand-held cameras, the grim natural light, the misogyny, the attempted shocks – in the service of a painfully immature story without a shred of psychological understanding or depth in its main character.
Most hot young actors wouldn’t dare trying to play vacuous, affected, manipulative, selfish, back-stabbing rich kids. It would look too much like reality. Ryan Phillippe, though, is one of our great screen artists. He has the guts to play a vacuous, affected, manipulative, selfish, back-stabbing rich kid, and to avoid the criticism that he is simply being himself, he decides to play the role badly.
If two young women characters in a movie decide to take a vacation to an exotic locale before going to their respective colleges, the viewer can be certain one of two things will happen: They’ll have passionate sexual awakenings at the hands of a handsome stranger, or they’ll be unjustly imprisoned in a fucked-up judicial system with seemingly no hope of ever getting out. In the case of Brokedown Palace, we get both.
Takeshi Kitano’s Fireworks is remarkable for many reasons, but its greatest achievement is taking a character capable of extreme violence and sweet tenderness and absolutely nothing in between and making him believable and rich. The feat looks all the more impressive considering the character’s perpetual mask of blank impassivity.
Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible is such a formal accomplishment that its already repellent content becomes even more so.
The conventional interpretation of American Beauty is wrong, and lauding or damning the movie based on it is a major mistake. Except for the prologue, American Beauty is a movie within a movie, not a straightforward narrative.
I had an amazing moment watching Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men. When the movie’s twist was revealed, I immediately felt cheated. I’ve seen a few con-artist films in my day, and this one – which had seemed so promising and interesting and different – was suddenly just the same as David Mamet’s, particularly House of Games.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was overshadowed in hype, box office, and awards late last year by that other odd, Charlie Kaufman-scripted movie, Adaptation. But Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a superior work. It is more engaging, more challenging, and more stylish, and it packs an emotional wallop that makes Adaptation feel even more glib and cynical.
Eye of God is a great demonstration of the power of structure. The 1996 film written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson piles cliché upon cliché. And yet, the movie works.
