| alkytrio666 |
02-27-2010 02:32 PM |
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Nothing short of atrocious. The premise of this film is almost intruiging, but Gray's laughable direction and the cringe-worthy script/acting combination make this film worthless. The thing stinks of non-sensical self-righteousness, boasting a character who is too victimized to be a villain and too cruel to be hero; this makes Gerard Butler's character simply that- a character, totally unfit for social commentay or tragic sympathy. The film goes from bad to worse as Butler starts preying on people we're supposed to believe are guilty, and the story becomes more and more presumptuous as it assumes we are blindly following its radical anarchy. I wasn't.
Under the Roofs of Paris (1930)
A whimsical "love story" that exhibits Clair's signature mix of hysterical cinematic comedy and pathos. It is also an exemplary piece of sound cinema, which is no surprise- I don't think it would be unreasonable to call Clair the first great film sound artist. This story is wonderfully unconventional and even takes some strange dramatic turns, but the characters (as they usually do in a Clair film) keep our attention and demand our sentiment- or at least our curiosity. I'm not sure whether I liked the ending- I'm still mulling over its surprising twist- but I loved watching the transition between Clair's silent cinema and his sound cinema, and the in-between he liked to occupy at this stage of his career.
The Hurt Locker (2009)
An incredible war film which has garnered deserved praise for both its barbaric realism and exciting action. Bigelow has always been a director of enormous talent, and I am glad to see her find a real gem in this script, a story that lets her utlize her eye for movement and her delightful sense of humor.Using the Iraq war as a backdrop, she explores intense psychological questions without attempting pretentious answers. The cast is one of the best parts of this film- Mackie, Fiennes, Pearce, and especially Jeremy Renner- these are actors of extraordinary power who find real motivation in these parts. The key to the film's success is the way it uses these actors not as pawns or political ideologies, as most contemporary war films do, but as human beings. The violence which occurs is not a result of war as an event but as a result of the people who participate in it. The intensity of an event is only as big as the people who cause it, and Bigelow allows us to see cause and effect relationships, both minor and catastrophic, in a reasonable and unpolitical way.
Black Dynamite (2009)
I haven't had a good laugh in a while, and 'Black Dynamite' gave me the opportunity to laugh at and with a handful of people who know blaxploitation well- and who see all the treasures along with all of the pitfalls to the extinct genre that gave the seventies so much soul. Chalk this up to intelligence; though the film may come across as dumb fun, director Scott Sanders and actor Michael Jai White know exactly what they're doing, and they do it well. The sexism and racism the genre once knew is here parodied and satired, and the result is an exquisite commentary and entertainment- the kind we thought too distant for recovery. One-liners, boom mics and afros abound, this is a tremendous success- let's hope for a sequel!
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