I didn't write about any of these right after I saw them
This represents a full month of viewing. I feel ashamed not only at the small number of films here, but also at the level of writing, which is rather cursory. I apologize.
Films Watched August 6 - September 2
Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007) - For the first two-thirds of its running time I thought this was on its way to being one of the best science fiction films to come out in a while. Then, as Danny Boyle films sometimes do, the story derailed in the third act into something that had little to do with the rest of the plot, turning for all intents and purposes into a slasher film that doesn't even make sense contained within its own 20 minutes of attention. The rest of it was still rather enjoyable, and I liked Boyle's sometimes unusual visuals, his reoccurring "eye" theme, and his somewhat challenging use of noise music...though I'm still not sure it added up to anything in the end other than grasping at coolness.
Strit og Stumme (Jannik Hastrup, 1987; it was called Dreaming of Paradise by the American distributor) - A subtly bleak post-apocalyptic fable dressed in happy little kids-film clothing (probably pushed further in the English-language dub). There's a frankness about both sex and death you'd never find in an American children's film and I found it rather refreshing in that respect. The story is a curiosity I'm still mulling over; it's largely reliant on an old legend set up early in the film that I was expecting to be resolved symbolically, but surprisingly turned out to be completely literal; and the gun-toting, ten-gallon-hat-wearing rat President who supplies the film with its primary villain is clearly meant to be a shot at the USA, but I can't figure out if the director was trying to say something specific about us or if it was just there because Danes would find it funny. (I'm currently leaning towards the latter.) Some of these issues might have been obscured by a translator trying to make the movie more easily digestible for American children, but I can't be certain.
Away with Words (Christopher Doyle, 1999) - I don't have anything new to say about this, but when I first wrote about it almost two years ago apparently I recommended it very specifically to isogon, so I hope she enjoyed it.
The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel & James McTiegue, 2007) - If the studio had taken Children of Men out of Cuaron's hands and hired Jan de Bont to reshoot half the movie, it probably would have turned out looking a lot like The Invasion. What an awful, awful mess. As a suspense film it's rushed to the point of disbelief -- not only do things happen so fast they have no time to cause dread, they happen so fast that the timeline doesn't even make sense. (Example: the virus lands on earth in the middle of the night. The very next morning, Nicole Kidman's first patient tells her that her husband has been acting strangely and she's worried he's not the same person. The very next morning!) So all that's left is a chase film, but that gets boring very fast since there's basically no variation in the chase and not much of anything else happening aside from weird, confused performances, painfully stiff technobabble, gratuitous nipple shots, and a total absence of any chemistry in the totally useless love angle, all topped off with a bad cop-out ending.
Then there's the way the film grasps at several potentially relevant topics -- immigration/I.D. cards, poisoned food, government suppression of science -- but fails utterly to engage in any of them, and then makes a desperate attempt at squeezing some strange, stilted sort of moralizing into the stilted chaos. Rosenbaum noted this as an advantage to the film: "a bitter kind of satiric irony leaking around the edges that suggests maybe the body snatchers have a point." I don't disagree, but you could say the same thing about Carnosaur, and this movie might actually be less subtle. The Invasion even gives one of its big speeches to a nihilistic old Russian guy just to hammer the point home.
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1965) - A girl from Dakar, Senegal follows a French couple back to France after they hire her to watch their children. There what began as a sense of liberation quickly turns into feelings of alienation and even imprisonment, and Sembene manages the extraordinary task of creating a film that works both as a very singular, personal account of a unique struggle and simultaneously as a universal message about class and imperialism with both sides of the story feeling completely at home in each other. To put a finer point on it, it's an obvious message movie, but the characters never feel as if they exist merely to serve the message. Thus, both character and message come across as equally vital and equally moving.
Borom sarret (Ousmane Sembene, 1965) - This short film is similar in tone and content to Black Girl, and if characterization is a bit more superficial it works because the film is shorter and more like a modern fable in its structure. The voice-over narration may be a bit redundant, but as the film is so short it doesn't get an opportunity to become intrusive.
Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames, 1977) - Awesome.
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) - I'm late to this party, but I enjoyed it immensely.
Films Watched August 6 - September 2
Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007) - For the first two-thirds of its running time I thought this was on its way to being one of the best science fiction films to come out in a while. Then, as Danny Boyle films sometimes do, the story derailed in the third act into something that had little to do with the rest of the plot, turning for all intents and purposes into a slasher film that doesn't even make sense contained within its own 20 minutes of attention. The rest of it was still rather enjoyable, and I liked Boyle's sometimes unusual visuals, his reoccurring "eye" theme, and his somewhat challenging use of noise music...though I'm still not sure it added up to anything in the end other than grasping at coolness.
Strit og Stumme (Jannik Hastrup, 1987; it was called Dreaming of Paradise by the American distributor) - A subtly bleak post-apocalyptic fable dressed in happy little kids-film clothing (probably pushed further in the English-language dub). There's a frankness about both sex and death you'd never find in an American children's film and I found it rather refreshing in that respect. The story is a curiosity I'm still mulling over; it's largely reliant on an old legend set up early in the film that I was expecting to be resolved symbolically, but surprisingly turned out to be completely literal; and the gun-toting, ten-gallon-hat-wearing rat President who supplies the film with its primary villain is clearly meant to be a shot at the USA, but I can't figure out if the director was trying to say something specific about us or if it was just there because Danes would find it funny. (I'm currently leaning towards the latter.) Some of these issues might have been obscured by a translator trying to make the movie more easily digestible for American children, but I can't be certain.
Away with Words (Christopher Doyle, 1999) - I don't have anything new to say about this, but when I first wrote about it almost two years ago apparently I recommended it very specifically to isogon, so I hope she enjoyed it.
The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel & James McTiegue, 2007) - If the studio had taken Children of Men out of Cuaron's hands and hired Jan de Bont to reshoot half the movie, it probably would have turned out looking a lot like The Invasion. What an awful, awful mess. As a suspense film it's rushed to the point of disbelief -- not only do things happen so fast they have no time to cause dread, they happen so fast that the timeline doesn't even make sense. (Example: the virus lands on earth in the middle of the night. The very next morning, Nicole Kidman's first patient tells her that her husband has been acting strangely and she's worried he's not the same person. The very next morning!) So all that's left is a chase film, but that gets boring very fast since there's basically no variation in the chase and not much of anything else happening aside from weird, confused performances, painfully stiff technobabble, gratuitous nipple shots, and a total absence of any chemistry in the totally useless love angle, all topped off with a bad cop-out ending.
Then there's the way the film grasps at several potentially relevant topics -- immigration/I.D. cards, poisoned food, government suppression of science -- but fails utterly to engage in any of them, and then makes a desperate attempt at squeezing some strange, stilted sort of moralizing into the stilted chaos. Rosenbaum noted this as an advantage to the film: "a bitter kind of satiric irony leaking around the edges that suggests maybe the body snatchers have a point." I don't disagree, but you could say the same thing about Carnosaur, and this movie might actually be less subtle. The Invasion even gives one of its big speeches to a nihilistic old Russian guy just to hammer the point home.
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1965) - A girl from Dakar, Senegal follows a French couple back to France after they hire her to watch their children. There what began as a sense of liberation quickly turns into feelings of alienation and even imprisonment, and Sembene manages the extraordinary task of creating a film that works both as a very singular, personal account of a unique struggle and simultaneously as a universal message about class and imperialism with both sides of the story feeling completely at home in each other. To put a finer point on it, it's an obvious message movie, but the characters never feel as if they exist merely to serve the message. Thus, both character and message come across as equally vital and equally moving.
Borom sarret (Ousmane Sembene, 1965) - This short film is similar in tone and content to Black Girl, and if characterization is a bit more superficial it works because the film is shorter and more like a modern fable in its structure. The voice-over narration may be a bit redundant, but as the film is so short it doesn't get an opportunity to become intrusive.
Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames, 1977) - Awesome.
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) - I'm late to this party, but I enjoyed it immensely.