Blue Velvet (1986)

In short: If you don't enjoy David Lynch, you won't enjoy "Blue Velvet." If you do, see it (assuming you haven't already).

Kate: Um. Yeah. Ross assured me that this was a classic that many consider to be the ultimate in David Lynch, so I stayed through the whole thing. Otherwise, I think I would have left halfway through. I was bored--and not in a Thumbsucker, gee-I-wonder-when-the-dentist-will-come-back kinda way, but in a gee-I-wonder-if-someone-with-an-exposed-brain-could-actually-stand-up-like-that kinda way.

So I get that it is supposed to make me uncomfortable. And I get that it is supposed to be making fun of movie conventions and dialogue. But the result isn't deep, it's just boring. Other films have done it better, and continue to do it better (the film I saw with Ross in chicago comes to mind, though the name escapes me [Aesthenic Syndrome]). David Lynch somehow managed to make a statement about film and simultaneously MAKE ME NOT CARE. Congrats.

Ross: Indeed, I expected to leave this movie having soiled myself in pure cinematic ecstasy several times, and this didn't happen. I didn't think the movie was pointless, though. I think Lynch was trying to give his spin on both the traditional coming of age story and dark Freudian stuff about the subconscious, which was that (1) coming of age includes developing a dark, scary subconscious, and (2) that the subconscious, while dark and scary, is also kind of ridiculous. And I think he does this pretty effectively -- many parts of the movie are genuinely funny, which I wasn't expecting. This interpretation might be a bit of a stretch, so if anybody reading this objects, I'd be interested in your comments.

I would not say that this is Lynch's strongest film. I don't think that it's any deeper/darker/more disturbing than, say, "Mulholland Drive," and I think the latter film is also much more engaging. This is important. I accept that a David Lynch film is going to be an intricate philosophical puzzle, but, since I'm lazy, I'm more likely to try to work through that puzzle if I get really sucked into it. And again, if anybody can explain to me why "Blue Velvet" is a better film than "Mulholland Drive," I'd like to hear it.

Mirrormask (2005)

In short: Don't bother. (Unless you're a Gaiman freak, in which case you'll see it regardless of what we say)

Kate: I'm leaving this one to Ross, who gets talkative when he's pissed off. Besides, he's the animation freak. Just know that I didn't think that it was quite as bad as he did. Not worth going to the theater, mind you--but maybe if you were bedridden and had watched every other movie in the house...

Ross: The most positive thing I can say is that I didn't absolutely hate the last third of it, and if one had to choose only one third of their movie to not be abominable, the last one is a good choice. Kate has speculated that the reason the last part is watchable (even kind of enjoyable) is that it's paced correctly, plain and simple. This could well be the case, I'm not sure. As a coming of age story (and many of you know that, in general, I dont' like these), I think it's not bad -- as a story, even if the movie is bad. I feel like this could have been a movie, but it definitely didn't turn out that way. And with that in mind, a collection of objections:

1. The animation isn't very good. It was done on the cheap, and it shows. It's not surprising; I heard that the budget was like $4 million, and that's just not enough to do a feature film that's mostly animated. Sorry.

2. I don't care about mirror land, at least not until the last third of the movie. The director spends a lot of time trying to "establish the world," which is something I hear bantered about a bit with regards to fantasy, sci-fi, etc. I think it's crap. "Defining the world" is analogous to telling, not showing, and is better done in fan fiction than in a movie.

3. "Look, we're on a quest!" I feel like a lot of the time in the movie is spent establishing that we're following one of those classical plots, and that somebody (my imaginary interlocutor) will object that there are really only six stories, so it's okay if the director slavishly followed one of them. And I will respond (to the imaginary interlocutor) that the job of a director (author, etc.) is to embellish those plots until they seem alive and new.

So finally, we come to the thing that I think went wrong with this movie. A film needs a director. The director not only has to understand all of the steps in the filmmaking process (writing, design, acting, photographic composition, editing), they have to understand something called dramaturgy. This, at least, is the approach to things that is taught at VGIK, and I think it's a good approach. If a director doesn't understand how to dynamically unfold a plot, well, they're finished.
And David McKean is finished. I hope that, if there is a next time, he and Neil Gaiman respect that and hire a director who knows what they're doing.

Brazil (1985)--director's cut

In short: If you haven't already seen this, then get your butt in gear. But be sure to rent the director's cut.

Kate:
I was looking at Rotton Tomatoes to find out when this film was released, and I noticed that it has a 97% approval rating. With good reason, since it's FREAKIN' GREAT. I liked this film the first time I saw it, and I liked it even more the second time. Funny, creepy, downright frightening. I've only seen the director's cut--the original theater release is thought to be inferior by nearly everybody. If pricing is any guide , the director's cut is around 4 times better than the theatrical release (the director's cut sells for upwards of 80 dollars online). Seeing it in the theater was great.

Ross:
So, everybody knows that this is an excellent film. Two things struck me when I watched it this time, both related to the fact that the last time I saw this movie, it was (1) before 9/11 and (2) probably on VHS. If you're like me, you think of the 80's as basically taking place in "VHS Color," which is to say crappy color, just like you think of the 50's as taking place in black and white (at least before seeing "Capote"). The print was a nice one, and so it wasn't in VHS Color. In fact, there were very few indications that this was made in the 80's -- the love interest looks a bit dated, but otherwise the movie holds up quite nicely.

In other ways, it's eerily prescient. I'd forgotten that the whole motivation for the Big Oppressive Government was Fighting the Terrorists. With that in mind, there were lots of moments that struck a chord that, four or five years ago, they would not have struck. So watch it again, if you haven't watched it recently.

Capote (2005)

In brief: See this one on the big screen. Not only is it really good (the only new film we've seen that competes with 3 Iron), it's shot very nicely and benefits from being on film.

Kate:

It is hard to say exactly what I liked so much about this film. But I think that most of it boils down to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Truman Capote. I honestly didn't know anything about Capote before seeing this film (afterwards, I learned that he was the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, a book that I have never read), but Hoffman's character was so engaging that I really don't care whether or not it was accurate. Perhaps the greatest of Hoffman's achievements is the delicate way in which he presents Capote's transformation (or lack thereof) throughout the film.

As the film progresses, our opinions about Capote slowly shift. At the start, he comes off as pleasantly eccentric and charismatic, albeit somewhat self-obsessed. We might even think him compassionate--he offers very personal stories to put the people he interviews more at ease and offers to find a better lawyer for the two men accused of murdering a Nebraska family. But as the story rolls along, our opinions of the man gradually shift. In the end, we see him as what he is--not charismatic, but glib, uttterly self-absorbed, and, above all, manipulative in the extreme.

But what makes this amazing story-telling (and perhaps what makes this film so good) is that Capote doesn't really change. You can look back at the beginning of the movie and see that all of those character traits--the ones that you though were new--were actually always there. You are left in the same position as Capote's friend, Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener) who becomes disillusioned with Capote after the circumstances serve to highlight the things that were there all along. In other words, the director manages to change our perceptions of Capote, without actually changing Capote himself.

The same thing happens, in a less dramatic way, to the accused murderer, and our shift in perspective takes a few sharp turns along the way. As we learn more about the two of them, we first see them as just another pair of criminals, then as individuals with something to offer the world, then as savages, and finally some nuanced combination of the above. The last perspective is clearly the most accurate, and it is the one we are left with.

This shift in perceptions takes two things: an extraordinary level of acting talent, and an extraordinary directing talent. Apparently, this film benefited from both. Hoffman's treatment of Capote is so fantastically good that you forget that there is an actor there at all. Clifton Collins Jr, who plays Perry, was also very convincing--though it is difficult to compare him with Hoffman. The director's work was equally good. The pacing was spot-on, the cinematography and editing was great (I honestly had a hard time remembering if it was shot in black and white or color) and the story was wonderfully end-loaded. When the climax of the film finally arrives, you realize that while it was highly anticipated--and terribly violent--it was not really all that important. In treating the climax so delicately, the director seems to be emphasizing that the story is not what is important, but rather the characters.


Ross:

Though Kate and I both really like this film, I think we disagree about some very basic things. The film is, to speak in very general terms, a study of how Capote was broken. It's true that this is a subtle process. If I were feeling adventurous, I'd say that the point of the film is that understanding things (say our personal failings) doesn't always enable us to change them.

While watching this movie I was reminded of an essay that I read awhile back. I don't remember it very well -- I think it was by Christopher Hitchens, but I can't find it now -- about the moral imagination. The idea was that one of the things that made novels useful (and not mental cheesecake) was that they could make moral problems that we hadn't encountered immediate, real, and maybe teach us something in the process. The director is very sympathetic to Capote, at least in the beginning, and that makes some of his later decisions much more painful.

Of course, the director does everything else right. The cleanliness that suffuses the film and numerous displays of restraint on the part of the director mark this as a really mature film. But this is not what distinguishes this film from all the other technically "correct," clever films that play at the Michigan. And I think that's all I have to say about that.