CineMedusa

Movie Reviews

by Mara Math

It Was The Best/Worst of Times

by Mara Math

It's been a big year for writer/director/actor/narcissists, and that's not even counting Woody Allen: Caveh Zahedi, Dito Montiel, and Roberto Benigni have all committed crimes against film, but there have also been some great joys on offer, including a few great roles for women. (See my Ebert-inspired film dictionary: A movie can be indentified as a genre film if it only has one role for a woman. ) Herewith my picks for Best, Worst, and Most Pretentious films of the year. (Films with 2005 production dates did not open in San Francisco until 2006.)

BEST FILMS OF 2006

In order of preference:

Half Nelson

A subtle and deceptively-low key character study in this zietgeist snapshott, Ryan Gosling's best role to date. [See full review in Mill Valley Film Festival Reviews]

The Queen

A witty, incisive look at British politics and culture, with the superb Helen Mirren channeling Queen Elizabeth II. [See full review in Mill Valley Film Festival Reviews]

Pan's Labyrinth

Brilliant art direction is integral to this dark, inventive tale about imagination as a revelatory and liberating force against familial and political repression under Franco. (Not a children's film!)

Venus

A very nearly perfect small film likely to be remembered as Peter O'Toole's glorious swan song--and as the introduction of the talented Jodie Whittaker.

Notes on a Scandal

Judi Dench revels in a ferocious performance as an embittered older teacher, the all-too-aptly-named Barbara Covett, in an incisive, heartbreaking depiction of the corrosive effects of loneliness. Dench is well complemented by Cate Blanchett as the ditzy boho new colleague who indulges in an affair with a student, putting herself at Barbara's mercy. [See full review]

The Departed

A sheerly satisfying filmgoing experience. The intricately layered themes of trust and betrayal are well-delivered by Scorcese and well-acted (yes, even by diCaprio.)

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Three Burials may take on a few too many themes centered on borders of varying types, including the locus of the physical Mexican-U.S. divide, but at at least this poetic--if a tad too nonlinear--and intelligent film is about something.

The Puffy Chair

In only 85 minutes, this gem of an indie says nearly as much about relationships between men and women as the whole of The Second Sex. Yes, the sneaking-into-the-motel scene is priceless, but even more devastating is Josh's recitation of the differing marriage vows he's written for his brother and his brother's girlfriend.

Children of Men

Although the story is less satisfying than Pan's Labyrinth, art direction is crucial here as well, limning the chilly, weary, grubby world of a futuristic--but not very far in the future--Britain whose cultural sterility under a repressive government matches the physical sterility afflicting the population. Michael Caine is a delight as the the unregenerate old hippie.

Cache [Hidden]

Admittedly I could watch Daniel Auteil read the phone book, but no bias is necessary to appreciate this French psychological thriller about the after-effects of the French-Algerian conflict. Auteil is note-perfect as the smug yuppie who must face the past he has hidden from himself.

Honorable Mention

In order of preference:

Features

• Army of Shadows

• Water

• Duck Season

• The Last King of Scotland

• Little Miss Sunshine

• 13 Tzameti

• Casino Royale

• House of Sand

• L'Enfant

• Little Children

Documentaries

• This Film is Not Yet Rated

• Who Killed the Electric Car?

• An Inconvenient Truth

• The Ground Truth

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WORST FILMS OF 2006

Absolute Crassest Award:

The Tiger and the Snow

Even without having seen the straight-to-video American Pie: The Naked Mile, I can still guarantee that The Tiger and the Snow is the crassest film released all year. The second entry in his "It's a Wonderful War" franchise, Benigni here employs the war in Iraq solely as an exotic backdrop to provide challenges for his nebbishy hero--literally minus any deaths, broken or bleeding bodies, starvation, or even a scream. "The bombs look like angels," he mewls in one cringe-inducing scene.

Biggest Wasted Premise Award:

Unknown

A great thriller concept that devolves almost instantly into hysterical melodrama. The title is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the film's well-deserved fate.

The What-Century-Are-We-In? Award:

Soap

This heavy-handed Danish film means well but relies on a profoundly insulting stereotype of MtF transsexuals, akin to the way queers were portrayed not all that long ago: Hopeless, unloved, and friendless bundles of suicidally oversensitive nerves, and lacking more than a few brain cells.

The Retro-Sexism and Freudian Fat-Basher of the Year Award:

Monster House

In this dull animation for kids, the feisty young girl suddenly becomes passive to let The Boy be The Hero. And, in an unintentionally transparent Freudianism, the movie warns that if a woman gets too big, she will eat you!

Cutesy-Wutesy Horror Award:

Boynton Beach

Oh, the horror. Not the horror of geriatric sex, which is the movie's only plus, but the horror of what is essentially the tritest of teen sex comedies transposed to a Florida "bereavement" club. See Dyan Cannon's eyes peer out from behind the wall of plastic that is now her face! Shiver at the terrifyingly skeletal Sally Kellerman, wasted in a humiliating role! Thrill to plot twists as surprising as oxygen! All of this and more in a script so sloppy that elderly single women put their home addresses on their business cards.

Most Wasted Opportunity Award:

The Bridge

In this neon-calling-card project, for which he by all accounts began his publicity campaign long before shooting a single frame, the director's decision to ignore the ordinary shlubs in favor of the more attractive suicides reduces much of the film to a kind of necro-porn.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Narcissist Award:

I am a Sex Addict

Self-indulgence to the max, replete with awful direction, bad acting, and anachronistic costuming.

Silver Nitrate Died for This? Award:

Little Man

Ick. Just ICK.

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MOST PRETENTIOUS FILMS OF 2006

V for Vendetta

Much well-executed "revolutionary" sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing--empty at the core.

Factotum

Director Bent Hamer buys into the late poet Charles Bukowski's grandiose delusion, quoted in voiceover, that Bukowski had a hard life because he "went all the way for the writing." No. He didn't. He went all the way for the alcohol, as the film drearily insists on showing us. [See full review under [Capsule Reviews]

Time to Leave

"I am a handsome, moody, opaque shit, dying too young--admire me.."

Art School Confidential

Some artists are really just poseurs, more interested in money and fame than art itself? Rock my world! to employ a phrase as cliched as the bulk of this film.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

So amateurish and self-preening in even the first few frames that when the title "A film by Dito Montiel" came up I laughed, anticipating a wonderfully awful film-within-a-film by a character named Montiel. Alas, it's just awful.

Shortbus

Well-intentioned effort from the great John Cameron Mitchell, but great things rarely come from great writer/directors abdicating and letting their actors improvise the script. Rarely has sex been so boring.

I Am a Sex Addict

Except here. (See The Ten Worst above.)

Backstage

Yet another French film in which "I loathe you!" serves as foreplay. Yawn.

Lunacy

As with Svankmejer's last film, Little Otik, the endlessly repetitive horror here, no matter how technically--even exquisitely adept--fails to build to anything except tedium.

The Quiet

Oh, pulleeeeze.

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Good Bets

Promising films I haven't seen and therefore couldn't rank:

Features:

• Brick

• The Death of Mr. Lazarescue

• Friends with Money

• United 93

Documentaries:

• Deliver Us From Evil

• 49 Up

• Jesus Camp

New Category --

When Bad Titles Happen to Good Films

Nominations accepted:

• Puffy Chair

• Half Nelson

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Individual Reviews

Notes on a Scandal

Them as has, git. That's the cruel Catch-22 of loneliness: The very whiff of loneliness often sends others running for cover, leaving the lonely one even more isolated; he who dares become bitter over these rejections will suffer even more rejection. And bitter, Barbara Covett certainly is--her middle name might as well be alum. The older teacher's devastating one-line dismissals of her colleagues and students zing with wit and contempt. Was the the all-too-aptly-named Covett always a lonely, vicious bitch, or did the corrosive effects of loneliness help make her one? The question is left open, but the latter is certainly suggested. Dench revels in a ferocious performance as Barbara, capturing every minute shading of desperation, hauteur, fear, andslyness. She is well complemented by Cate Blanchett as the also too-aptly-named Sheba Hart (Hart? Get it? Get it?), the ditzy, gorgeous boho new colleague who unintentionally puts herself at Barbara's mercy. Like her namesake Bathsheba, the radiant beauty is coveted by many, with disastrous results for all, although the 15-year old student (Andrew Simpson) with whom she indulges in an affair actually survives the mess better than anyone else. Then again, as portrayed by Simpson, the boy gives a new meaning to the term "cocky."

For those who find Notes a touch too melodramatic, let me note that I was so stricken by the resemblance between Covett's behavior and that of an ex-- who lost two different teaching jobs by stalking the deputy headmistress at each school--that I had to Google author Zoe Heller, on whose novel the film is based, to verify that she had not spent time in New Zealand. Unlike that ex, Barbara has never uttered the word lesbian to herself; while campaigning ruthlessly for the friendship of the stunning new art teacher, she cannot admit to herself exactly what she wants from her "special friend." This lack of self-knowledge redeem the character from a tendency toward the cliche of ye olde psycho-predator lesbo; it's clear that if Barbara applied the scythe of her acute insight to herself, she'd stand a better chance of finding the intimacy for which she longs, instead of seeking it in all the wrong people. When Sheba, in one of the film's best lines, sighs despairingly that family doesn't give life a meaning, only purpose, the ever-more delusional Barbara translates this as Sheba agreeing to abandon her family for a Boston marriage.

As Sheba's older yuppie husband, Bill Nighy is, as always, a pleasure, bringing to Richard just the right tinge of pomposity and impatience. Max Lewis, appearing as the Down's syndrome son for whom Sheba has sacrificed much, belongs to a London troupe Chickenshed that works with mentally-challenged performers, and is the subject of the forthcoming book Life to the Max, by his mother Sandy Lewis. (One of the many astonishing anecdotes from the book: Max was revealed at age nine to have survived his earlier years of integration into mainstream schooling by, in fact, acting: he had learned by heart all the books in his curriculum, and actually could not read at all.)

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Dreamgirls

Jennifer Hudson nearly single-handledly redeems this film version of the inexplicably popular stage musical. It's Motown without the beat, Diana Ross without the ambition (as if!), and the 60's and 70s without any politics. When a movie ostensibly about three women advertises two male leads, beware.

As an indictment of Berry Gordy, the film works well, explicating his greed and chicanery; unfortunately, this means the audience is subjected to the most painfully pallid imitations of the less-than-stellar music he had already nearly literally deracinated in his quest for crossover big bucks. And, of course, he's safely dead and cannot sue, unlike the Ross character (Beyonce), who is just the sweetest, tweetest, blankest piece of innocence--why, she had no ideeea that group founder Flo Ballard, er, Effie (Hudson), was starving on welfare and being ripped off for he royalties-- none, none, none whatsoever, it was all big bad Berry (Jaime Foxx). Eddie Murphy shines in a Little Richard-esque bit, minus, alas, (despite the actor's well-known affinity, per his arrest record, for "chicks w/dicks") any of Little Richard's sexual ambiguity. And yes, there are not one but several of the dreaded time-is-passing montages.

Overall, however, the film inarguably belongs to Hudson. The former sixth-runner up on the 2002 season of "American Idol" proves that not only can she belt out the ballads as well as Jennifer Holliday did in first establishing the role onstage, she can also act the hell out of a character. Let's hope the plus-sized 25-year old actor doesn't catch a case of the Hollywood Hiccups and start starving or carving.

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Factory Girl

You'll leave this film wishing Valerie Solanas had had better aim--and that seems to be the filmmakers' chief aim, at least certainly more than conveying who nominal subject Edie Segwick actually was. Guy Pearce intensively researched his role as Warhol, but ultimately plays him as a kind of zombie vampire who can only feed off the energy of others. No hint is allowed as to how Warhol was able to inspire artists to work for him, join him, often subjugate themselves to him, and in the same (bled-out) vein, Sedgwick herself remains opaque as Sienna Miller goes through the rise and fall of the Factory phenomenon.Miller's is not a bad performance, but the script relies on surface sensationalism, and it can't be an accident that in the "drug-addled collapse" portion, Miller suddenly resembles Judy Garland at her lowest. The two minutes of documentary footage at the film's far outstrip everything the entire narrative in conveying a glimpse of the magic that animated the 60's It Girl. (One can't help wondering if the status of sisters Brigid and Richie Berlin, both Factory survivors, as associate producers is connected to certain gaps in the story.)

Review Archives

• Capsule Reviews - October, 2006

• San Francisco International Film Festival Reviews - 2006

• Mill Valley Film Festival Reviews - 2006

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