Rental Quick Takes

First things first, Blockbuster is officially On Notice. I signed up for their online subscription a couple weeks ago, and things were running along smoothly until Werner Herzog's Stroszek came along. I noticed before I even put the disc in that it had a weird crack on the side of it, but it wasn't that big, and it was close to the edge, so I thought maybe everything would be OK.

Well, it wasn't, and with about 10 minutes left, the movie froze up, and I couldn't get it to play any further. I thought, what the hell, these things happen, and reported the disc as unplayable and sent it back. Three days later, I get Stroszek back in the mail and ... it's the exact same disc. Still cracked. Still doesn't play.

I sent them an email, and am awaiting a response. Better be good, guys.

Anyway...

Sex, Lies, and Videotape: Fun movie, in the sense that it's not really very good but knows how to push buttons and screw with your expectations. It's like Soderbergh's career all makes sense to me now.

Brief Encounter: As (almost) always, I was impressed with the efforts of the Criterion Collection for this movie, but honestly, the movie felt rooted in outdated attitudes and acting styles. I tried to put myself in the position of a conservative 1940s viewer but I couldn't really get there.

Reds: Here's one that was easy for me to put myself in the mindset of the contemporary viewer. This is because, despite the events in the world during the past 20 years, Communist paranoia is still alive and well in the fever swamps of American right-wing politics. This movie must have caused quite the stir back in 1981, but I thought it was a good reminder of just how great Warren Beatty can be. Also, interesting to watch Diane Keaton play someone I didn't hate.

Donnie Darko: Finally got around to seeing it (I rented the director's cut). I loved the first two hours of it, but felt cheated a bit by the last ten minutes. Incidentally, I really enjoyed this essay on the film buy RogerEbert.com's Jim Emerson, although it didn't really help me with the last ten minutes.

The Princess and the Warrior: Enjoyed it as much as I could, but I have to chastise Sony for their DVD. It seemed that it wasn't encoded for progressive scan, so there was an incredible amount of of digital artifacts, scan lines, etc. I fought through it the best I could, but it probably made the movie seemed longer, slower, and uglier than it actually was.

Venus

The question occurred to me while watching Venus last weekend - what exactly is acting? Peter O'Toole's performance in the film, of course, has been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, but I had mixed feelings about it.

Just to get it out of the way, I don't think the movie is really all that good. It's fitfully amusing, and there are nice moments here and there (mainly the ones O'Toole shares with Vanessa Redgrave), but on the whole I didn't feel it adds up to much. Frankly, I think a big problem is that the character of Jessie, played by Jodie Whittaker, just isn't that interesting. She's a terribly ordinary girl, boring even. It's hard to know why Maurice (O'Toole's character) cares to spend any time with her at all; I was progressively less willing as the movie went on.

So I got to passing the time wondering if anyone would have noticed O'Toole's performance if he wasn't "Peter O'Toole", with all the history and baggage that the name carries with it. It seemed clear to me that he and director Roger Michell were leaning less on O'Toole's actual acting than his image as a legendary, but feeble, old actor. It didn't seem like a natural or sincere kind of performance; it felt like an old man with a bag of tricks playing to the audience.

Yet, I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, at least not completely, because they're still impressive tricks. I mean, how do we judge performances anyway? If the intent is to play off of one's image, is it still "acting"? Is a performance any less noteworthy (or Award-worthy) if it depends on what the audience brings to the film, instead of what they find there?

Like I said, these are the things I was pondering while watching an otherwise dull film. Wish I could say that I came up with a decent answer, but a week later I'm still scratching my head.

Blood Diamond

Saw Blood Diamond this afternoon, thought it was kinda stupid. It tries very hard to be a serious-minded movie, but it's too much of an action movie to have much impact on a political level. I'll give Zwick credit for bringing up an issue that no one really wants to think about, and at times being willing to deal with it in very brutal terms. However, I think stopping every 20 minutes to blow some shit up just for the hell of it really trivializes the issues at hand. Maybe that's just me.

And it's not even a very good action movie. It relies too much on lots of machine guns being fired and not hitting anyone, and it's the type of movie where the action scenes always start just as an important conversation is ending. It's like a Michael Bay made the thing.

As for the acting, I can somewhat respect what Leo does here, but really his character is too ridiculous to be believed. It's like he's part Rambo, part James Bond, and part Rick Blaine. It's a testament to his ability he's as credible as he is, but there's only so much he can do.

Jennifer Connelly is close behind. Again, she's not bad, but she's stuck playing off of two female character cliches: the tough-as-nails professional and the girl who swoons for the badass. Djimon Hounsou comes across best, but late in the movie his character goes into Complete Idiot Mode, and it really makes him hard to root for.

By the end, I was actually laughing at it. I don't want to spoil anything - so if you're worried skip the rest of this paragraph - but during the last scene of the movie, the ending of Michel Gondry's Human Nature came to mind. "Would you testify to Congress?" "OK, if you think it would help." Funny stuff.