Getafilm Gallimaufry: Lorna, Basterds, Slumdog, and Sellouts

[Note: This series is comprised of scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was simply looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment. Lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

I suppose I should explain my reasoning for this since it's the first time around. I'm basically imagining these to be mini-reviews and commentaries on all kinds of movie bits that don't really deserve their own post. Sometimes I have an opinion about a recent movie but I don't feel like writing a proper review. Other times I have a random thought or remembrance about a movie, or I read an article or blog post that stirs an idea in my mind. I figure if I record them here I'm less likely to forget them. Here goes...

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Lorna's Silence (A-)

Local film critic Colin Covert recently used the term "ethical thriller" to describe the film genre that includes movies like Lorna's Silence. I love that categorization, and if this is what the Dardenne brothers are masters of then I need to see more of their films, probably starting with the much buzzed about L'enfant from a few years ago.

There's something about this kind of puzzle-piece filmmaking that gets me every time: no setup, no introduction to the characters, no sense about anything at all. We're just blindly dropped in the middle of the story, with only our critical thinking ability, patience, and focused attention to lead us out. If you like to be spoon fed plot details, this is obviously not the kind of movie for you.

Two other great nuggets about this movie are its exploration of illegal immigration (Albanians in Belgium, a refreshing break from the norm) and the revelatory performance by Arta Dobroshi as Lorna, who looks so much different in the photo gallery on her IMDb profile that I wouldn't have thought it was the same person. Even more unbelievable is the fact that this is only her third acting role. It earned her a Best Actress nomination at the European Film Awards but she lost, somewhat deservedly, to Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long.

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Tarantino and a Terrific Trio

I didn't think a movie could be dissected to death more than The Dark Knight was last year, but here Inglourious Basterds is, another movie that draws a primarily male fanbase like kittens to fresh milk. Or Nazis to fresh milk, as it were.

I'm not a Tarantino fanboy, having passively watched the Kill Bills and skipping Grindhouse/Death Proof entirely (something I'm sure I'll have to remedy since the feature length version of Machete is due out in the next year). But I love his movies from the 90's, and to the extent that Inglourious Basterds is like those movies, well I love it, too. So that's about half the movie, and the rest I could do without. Even though the majority of dialogue in Tarantino movies is eye-rollingly witty banter between killer and victim, it still makes for an entertaining show (repetitive and increasingly stale with each movie, but entertaining nonetheless).

Though I can't deny the talent this guy has behind the camera, I also can't help but think he would be absolute repulsive in casual conversation. Part of it has to do with what seems like a real fetish with violence, and part of it has to do with quotes like this: (on Landa) "I knew Landa was one of the best characters I’ve ever written...I literally had to consider I might have written an unplayable part."; (on the misspelling of the film's title) "Here's the thing. I'm never going to explain that. You do an artistic flourish like that, and to explain it would just take the piss out of it and invalidate the whole stroke in the first place."

Could he be any more smug?

Variations on my facial expression if I were in a conversation with Quentin Tarantino...

At least we can be thankful the guy doesn't act in his own movies. On the contrary, he casts the perfect actors to play his "unplayable" characters. Christophe Waltz (left) is an absolute revelation, a force to be reckoned with both in the film and in the Oscar race. It's at least the best performance in the last two years, and arguably better than DD-L's Daniel Plainview.

Daniel Brühl (middle) was driving me crazy throughout Inglourious Basterds. I knew I had seen him in another movie, I knew I had greatly enjoyed him in another movie, and I had no idea what it was. 2 Days in Paris? Hmm, yes but no. The Bourne Ultimatum? No...ah, of course! The Edukators, an UMOTM if there ever was one.

And then there is Michael Fassbender who has, with Hunger and Inglourious Basterds, quite possibly risen to the top of my "must-watch" list, perhaps bumping Christian Bale out of the spot he's held for the last few years. This guy is absolutely terrific in some really challenging roles. I'm not crazy about his upcoming movies, but I'll deal.

As superb as these three actors are in Basterds, their combined excellence is almost negatively outweighed by Eli Roth's cartoonish, buffoonish, look-I'm-in-the-same-movie-as-Brad-Pitt smirkiness. It's unbearable.

For my thoughts on Inglourious Basterds as a whole, I'll direct you to the excellent review written by Manohla Dargis.

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Revisiting the Slumdog Soundtrack

Some songs from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack came up on my MP3 player the other day. I hadn't heard them for a few months but found that I enjoyed them just as much as when my giddiness about the movie was at its peak. I also realized that said giddiness about the movie was partly due to the music of A.R. Rahman. If you didn't like the music in this movie, it must have been hard to connect with it in an emotional or otherwise meaningful way. In other words, all of the people who hated this movie (and boy, they were a vocal group, weren't they?) probably hated, or at least disliked, the music as well.

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Sold Out, Shut Out

A couple of weeks ago was a free screening of Into Temptation, a locally-filmed drama starring Jeremy Sisto and Kristin Chenoweth. The trailer shows some great shots of Minneapolis, which piqued my interest much more than the story of a suicidal prostitute and the priest that tries to save her. Of course I only watched the trailer after the fact, so I guess I'm not sure why I went in the first place if the story didn't grab me.

Turns out it grabbed a lot of other people's interest, though, because the Edina was packed to the gills. I found out the hard way, showing up a few minutes before showtime to find that a waiting list had formed for no shows and empty seats. A seat opened here, a couple seats opened there. The name above me on the list got in; I didn't. Since I was the last one on the list, that means that I was literally the only person who showed up for this movie and didn't get to see it.

It was my own fault of course (my excuse this time: I was getting my bike fixed and running late), and it's definitely not the first time this has happened. My refusal to watch trailers, even inside the theater, means that I usually time my arrival to my seat for 10-12 minutes after the posted showtime, or 15-20 minutes for summer blockbusters that have up to 47 trailers before the movie. For screenings like Into Temptation, I usually show up "right on time", meaning right at the stated showtime, not 10 minutes early like a normal person.

So it's always a guessing game as to where I'll be able to sit in the theater, if I'll truly miss the last preview or, in some cases, if I'll even get into the theater at all. I rarely go to the movies on the busiest nights (Fri/Sat), so when I'm shut out because of a sellout on a weeknight I'm usually pretty frustrated. Makes no sense, I know. How can I complain about something that's my own fault?

REVIEW: Valkyrie (B+)

The biggest surprise of Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, besides the fact that Hitler lives (surprise!), is that it only took about five minutes for me to accept that S.S. officers were speaking with American and British accents. Part of this is because the first few minutes are mostly taken up by a massive bombing sequence that drowns out all voices, but most of it is because early on in the movie I realized I was hooked, and what was being said was more urgently important than how it was being said.

How is it possible to become gripped with suspense when the ending of the story is already known? I can't very well explain it but by pointing to something like United 93 or, more recently, Man on Wire (the relation between the two being eerily but entirely coincidental). One argument could be that it's the mark of good storytelling, but that would only make sense if Singer's recent movies (Superman Returns, X-Men, X2) had not been such dull stories compared to his earlier ones (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil). In any case, while part of Valkyrie's success as a narrative may be Singer's direction, the rest of it must be due to the significance of the issue at hand: a brazen assassination attempt on Hitler by officers in his own army, led by Colonel Claus con Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise).

It's a story that I have to admit I was only vaguely familiar with beforehand. Even if I recognized a handful of the participant's names, I knew nothing about the details of the planned coup, or how it ultimately went awry. Fortunately for me, Singer is a gifted director when it comes to suspense, occasionally injecting spooks and frights but otherwise maintaining a palpable amount of tension throughout the most important scenes. Indeed, Valkyrie's is the type of historical thriller that, at the peak of its power (right at about the halfway mark), sucked the breath out of the room and elicited involuntary cries of "Oh no!" from the audience. I wonder if I was the only one who was reminded of the NOC list heist scene in Mission: Impossible.

Chances are, because I doubt anybody else in the theater was waxing nostalgic about Tom Cruise The Actor (as I like to define him) like I was. What can I say? I love the guy's work, whether screaming at a video monitor in Tropic Thunder or screaming over the phone in Valkyrie. He consistently plays different versions of the same character (Born on the Fourth of July and Collateral being notable exceptions), but I enjoy all of them, especially when, as in Valkyrie (and The Firm and A Few Good Men), he plays the petulant, defiant hero.

Although this is Cruise's movie from beginning to end, the supporting performances by a cast that includes great character actors like Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson shouldn't be overlooked. Nor should the meticulous attention to detail in all aspects of the production, including the scenes filmed on location in Berlin (which were temporarily in jeopardy when Germany prohibited Cruise from working in the country due to his devotion to Scientology).

Is it that hard to find German actors these days?

Despite all of the praise I've lauded on Valkyrie, it's not without its flaws. For one thing, we really have no idea who Claus von Stauffenberg was or what his motives were in overthrowing the Third Reich. An awkward narration of a diary entry as the film opens is an attempt at setting the stage, but it's inadequate when it's not confusing (Cruise switches from English to accented German halfway through it). Additionally (though perhaps this shouldn't be considered a point of criticism), the message of hope in Valkyrie is almost completely ruined by the devastating ending. I wasn't expecting a triumph of the human spirit like Slumdog Millionaire, but it would have been nice to learn how von Stauffenberg inspired other mutinies throughout history, or how Operation Valkyrie ultimately affected the Nazi war effort. In that light, Valkyrie should not be viewed as an insightful historical account (compared to something like 2004's outstanding Downfall), but as a watchable suspense thriller it, like von Stauffenberg, almost gets the job done.


Grade:
Writing - 7
Acting - 9
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 44/50= 88% = B+

On the Horizon: An adaptation of an adaptation

Twice in 2008 we've seen films about the childlike, playful, imaginative side of filmmaking. Be Kind Rewind and Son of Rambow moderately succeeded in reminding us of the dreamworlds you can bring to life with a simple camcorder, but when it comes to truly capturing the joy of film, neither comes close to Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, made 20 years ago on a $5,000 "budget."

In 1981, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb were preteen best friends living near Gulfport, Mississippi, so fascinated with Steven Spielberg's new film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, that they decided to make their own version. Every character, every shot, start to finish. The sets would be in their basements and backyards. Cute, right?

Over the next seven years, the boys amazingly finished the film and proudly showed it to the community at the PepsiCo Auditorium in Gulfport (hmm, reminiscent of those 2008 films I mentioned...). That was supposed to be the end of the story - until Hostel director Eli Roth resurrected their film almost 15 years later for a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, TX, which started the ball rolling that eventually landed the now-adult trio an audience with the man himself - Steven Spielberg. Buzz out of Austin and a 2004 Vanity Fair article ("Raiders of the Lost Backyard") began a flood of press that soon reached producer Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men), who acquired the life rights of Chris, Eric, and Jayson for the purpose of creating the currently untitled feature length film about their story, to be written by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). Until that happens, Chris and Eric continue to attend screenings of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation while also working on their next project, What The River Takes.

I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation that was introduced by Eric Zala, who was the "official" director but also played Belloq. The story of the making of the film sounds fantastic; the DVD commentary for this might eventually end up being the best commentary ever, provided the trio can remember everything that happened over two decades ago. In any case, what really sets their story apart from other amateurs is the simple fact that their film is actually really good.

Seriously, just take a look at this shot-by-shot comparison. Still not impressed? Think about the fact that DVD and even VHS were unavailable for the first few years of their production. So yes, they had to recreate it from memory - memory and the 602 storyboards hand drawn by Eric Zala (check out the rest of the incredible production information here). Sure the video and audio aren't great, and yes, the continuity of haircuts and pubescent voices isn't perfect, but come on - it took them seven years, and the end result is still an amusing but astonishingly accurate recreation of the original Raiders, complete with all the same stunts, silly lines, and stirring musical score by John Williams. The only part missing from their 100 minute film is the well known Nazi vs. plane propeller scene from Raiders, but it's not because it was too difficult or dangerous (you can laugh away that thought after seeing the first 10 minutes of the film). Rather, as Eric Zala told the audience afterwards, it was because they couldn't get their hands on an expendable airplane, and using a model would have looked too "fake." Seriously, these guys didn't mess around - even when they were messing around.

I can't really do justice to the original Vanity Fair article, so I'll stop here and point you back up to that. If you're a fan of the Indiana Jones trilogy or even just a former backyard filmmaker yourself, do yourself a favor and find your way to the next screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. Eric Zala appeared confident that the Hollywood version of their story will happen soon, so keep an eye out. With the now confirmed box office success of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the timing might just be perfect for the adaptation of The Adaptation.