BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK
Dir. Richard Press
(2011, Not Rated, 84 min)

CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP
Dir. Rodman Flender
(2011, R, 88 min)

Bill Cunningham New York is a film not quite as compelling as its subject. Following eccentric New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham as he attends fashion shows, covers society events, and films average men and women on the streets of the Big Apple, it takes a scattered approach to his life, showing us snippets without a strong guiding focus. What is most interesting about him is his egalitarian approach to clothing. Anything that can’t be worn in normal life doesn’t interest him, and wild styles and colors excite him. He values creativity above all else and prefers the delightfully gaudy to the rigidly presentable. Watching him work made me want to dress more boldly, and as a New Yorker I now find myself hoping to be photographed by him, because if you can catch his eye, you’ve really got something.

Various developments in his life are fascinating. He celebrated his eightieth birthday during the production of this film and spent many of those years living in a shoebox studio in Carnegie Hall, until he and his fellow remaining artists were evicted; we hear a few stories of what life was like in this unique artistic oasis, but could do with greater detail. He left Women’s Wear Daily after his editors changed his copy to insult the subjects of his photos; such judgmental fashion commentary is anathema to him. Eventually, he was made an Officer of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, an honor he seemed genuinely gratified but baffled by; even though he was the guest of honor, he worked the event like any other.

Late in the film, first-time feature director Richard Press touches on emotional subjects that start to give us a deeper glimpse into the smiling, infectious man. When asked about his romantic history, Cunningham claims he never had time for one, but vaguely admits to having normal human urges. Is he gay? That was a matter of some concern to his parents, he tells us, but he doesn’t give us a definitive answer one way or the other. Is religion important to him? Here Cunningham remains silent for a long period before answering, and we sense a nerve being struck. Press is polite and even apologetic when asking such personal questions, and who could blame him for not wanting to offend such a generous, unassuming man, but he holds back precisely where he should push further. The talking heads have nothing but nice things to say about Bill Cunningham, but who is he really?

Conan O'Brien, legally prohibited from being funny on TV

The Conan O’Brien we meet on the road is brittle, tired, overextended. I hear stories sometimes of celebrities treated for “exhaustion” and assume it’s just publicist-speak for rehab, but with O’Brien I’d believe it. He is generous with his time, unwilling to slight his fans, but also resentful of those fans for demanding what little energy he has left. In this frustrated state he belittles his friends and coworkers with passive-aggressive sarcasm, though sometimes it’s just aggressive-aggressive; a visit from Jack McBrayer, who currently co-stars on NBC’s 30 Rock but used to appear in comedy bits on O’Brien’s Late Night talk show, is met with such abject meanness (disguised as friendly ribbing) that McBrayer appears stunned. Whether McBrayer is in on the joke is hard to say, but if I were in on that kind of joke, I’d want to get out of it.

The most fascinating insight of director Rodman Flender‘s film is right there in the title: Conan O’Brien can’t stop. To watch him on television or on stage is to laugh, but to watch him behind the scenes is to be exhausted with him. Even when his only audience is his assistant Sona or a flight attendant on a private plane, he is unable, or unwilling, to turn off the impulse to entertain and to receive the approval of laughter or applause. Watching him gave me the impression that a nightly talk show serves as his pressure release valve, providing an outlet for this need while also anchoring him in a consistent routine that, I can only hope, keeps him sane enough to spare those around him.

Dir. Angelina Jolie
(2011, R, 127 min)

Angelina Jolie could hardly have chosen a more ambitious project for her directorial debut. In the Land of Blood and Honey is a large-scale, wartime romance in a foreign language with a lot of moving parts, in both the story and the production, and given the film’s mixed reviews, I’m surprised by how well Jolie acquits herself behind the camera. Though well known for her international humanitarianism, she directs with an even hand and avoids turning the drama into bleeding-heart mush. Where the budding filmmaker could use more refinement is in her writing.

The film is set during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, during which the Serbs systematically evicted and executed Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the beginning, we meet Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) and Danijel (Goran Kostic) – a Muslim and a Serb, respectively – who are happily dating, though it’s not clear for how long, when they’re caught in the middle of a bomb blast at a night club. After that, they find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict, Ajla living under the thumb of military aggressors and Danijel working under his soldier father, but fate and screenwriting thrust the lovers back together.

But it’s not only the coincidences that are conspicuous about Jolie’s storytelling. She also front-loads the film with helpful but clunky dialogue passages intended to give us historical context; in one scene, Danijel’s father, Nebojsa (Rade Serbedzija), explains their motives for war, but the conversation sounds like, “I’ll tell you things you already know for the sake of the viewing audience.” And by midpoint, the film loses dramatic momentum as it starts to repeat itself: more than once, Ajla and Danijel reunite, secretly conduct their romance, and sporadically argue about their politics.

Jolie doesn’t fully address how untenable their position is; he protects her under the guise of holding her captive, but spends the rest of his time either hunting her people – might they be her family or friends? – or socializing with his fellow soldiers, who would as soon rape and kill her. Jolie uses their scenes to stage debates about relations between their peoples but doesn’t give us enough insight into their state of mind. How do they justify themselves? Each other? How do their feelings evolve in the midst of the dehumanizing chaos?

But as a director Jolie has strong visual and dramatic instincts. She captures the conditions of the war with grim realism and avoids bombast. Consider a scene in which Ajla’s sister, Lejla (Vanessa Glodjo), makes a horrific discovery, her mouth open in a silent scream; Jolie uses static shots, doesn’t embellish, and lets the tragedy sink in. I would like to see her helm a more polished screenplay by another writer. With more finely tuned narratives, she might eventually become more interesting behind the camera than she is in front of it.

Dir. Dee Rees
(2011, R, 86 min)

Pariah hasn’t received as much attention as Precious did two years ago, though they have much in common, from their subjects – struggling black teens in New York’s inner city – to their tone, and even the support of prominent black entertainers: Precious was championed by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, and Pariah is executive-produced by Spike Lee. Perhaps their similarities are precisely the reason it has flown under the radar, though I like this film slightly more than I liked Precious. It’s subtler and more life-size. In place of the monstrous physical and sexual abuse of Precious is a more recognizable parent-child dynamic, an uneasy stalemate built on silence and denial.

Alike (Adepero Oduye) is a seventeen-year-old girl who is more or less open about her lesbianism at school, where she is subject to gossip, though this isn’t a story about bullying. In fact, her education seems to be the most stable part of her life; she gets a high grade in a science class, which doesn’t seem to surprise her, and she takes an advanced-placement English class where her teacher looks forward to reading her new poems; unlike in Precious, where the teacher was a saintly savior, this character plays a smaller, more believable – yet still important – role in the protagonist’s life.

Her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans) is quietly homophobic, trying to steer her daughter into feminine dress and church services. She disapproves of Alike’s very masculine best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker); she doesn’t say why she disapproves, but they all know why. Alike’s father, Arthur (Charles Parnell) is a police officer who doesn’t spend much time at home and is likely having an affair; he assumes his daughter is straight, and goes out of his way not to hear otherwise. It’s not a problem, you see, if he never asks and she never tells. What works about this family dynamic is that the parents are not played simply as bigots; writer-director Dee Rees allows them to be human even as they are cruel. Audrey, in particular, is shown as a lonely woman who feels isolated at work and stays awake nights waiting up for her daughter or husband, or both, half-believing they’ve left her for good.

The film follows a familiar dramatic arc, perhaps overly so; for instance, there’s a subplot involving Alike’s new friend Bina (Aasha Davis) that goes exactly where we think it’s going. But the writing and performances ring true, especially by Oduye and Wayans, who bring human dimension to opposite sides of the troubling homophobia that exists in the black community; sitting one or two rows behind me in the theater, a young black man, who seemed not to realize what movie he had come to see, said aloud, “I don’t need to watch this gay shit, I’m straight!” For an object lesson in irony, look no further.

Dir. David Cronenberg
(2011, R, 99 min)

The characters in A Dangerous Method are petty and neurotic, but they hardly seem to realize it. The fascination of David Cronenberg‘s film – adapted by Christopher Hampton from his stage play The Talking Cure, which itself was adapted from the book A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr – is how the refined intellectuals of the early 20th century – specifically, pioneering psychologists Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) – mask their insecurities in the kinds of jargon they invented to describe other people’s insecurities. I don’t know how accurately this reflects the real relationship between Freud and Jung, but Cronenberg has made of them a fascinating portrait of repression so deep, it seems, that they developed an entire discipline to think their way around their feelings.

Jung is the more erratic of the two. He’s governed by powerful sexual impulses, and that just won’t do for a man who prides himself on his command of human behavior, so he denies his desires until he acts on them, followed by intense intellectual contrition. Rinse and repeat. He’s drawn to one of his patients, a Russian Jew named Sabina (Keira Knightley), whom he at first treats for bizarre emotional episodes, but then he crosses the line. But she is not a victim, per se, for after her breakdown she comes to accept desires that he can’t bear to address, and their roles reverse: she becomes bold and confident, while he withers with self-doubt.

Freud appears to be more grounded, but he is no less subject to his own obsessions. He informally counsels Jung, quietly enjoying the younger man’s admiration under the guise of friendship, but always careful to maintain his advantage. In one telling scene, Jung recounts a dream, and they analyze it together. Freud says he has also had an interesting dream, but makes a point of not telling Jung about it, explaining that he does not want to relinquish his “authority.” Fearing his own obsolescence and Jung’s potential to surpass him, he draws a clear line of superiority between them. Also coloring the Jewish, middle-class Freud’s opinion is a resentment of Jung’s wealth and Aryan race. Amazing how, just beneath the finery of science and intellect, the two men form a frenemy dynamic no more elevated than a storyline from Gossip Girl.

Cronenberg’s style is cold to the touch, pointedly austere, reflecting the characters’ willful suppression of feeling. Sabina, who becomes a doctor herself, believes that sex is akin to annihilation, and indeed Jung is terrified of destroying his reason, his logic, his detached objectivity – indeed his entire sense of himself – by giving in to his animal impulses. Appropriately, it is Sabina who is the film’s sole receptacle for passion, especially in her manic early scenes, during which Knightley’s wild, twitching enactment of a nervous breakdown falls somewhere between remarkably courageous and patently ridiculous, or maybe both at once. But it’s her madness that allows her to eventually see reason, while Freud and Jung’s obsessive reason slowly drives them to madness.

Dir. Phyllida Lloyd
(2011, PG-13, 105 min)

The Iron Lady plays like a 105-minute trailer for a ten-hour miniseries about British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At times it seems to be told entirely in montages and exposition, moving briskly through the 20th century, covering a little bit of everything but not revealing much of anything. Dealing with Thatcher’s upbringing in World War II-era England, her rise to power, her marriage to Denis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent), her physical and mental decline, and so on, and so on, and so on, the film skips like a stone over the surface of her life, but in doing so achieves little more depth than a high school essay on British political history. It would have been better to narrow the story down to a particular period and invest it with details we couldn’t as easily learn from Wikipedia.

What is it about biopics that makes them so beholden to formula? As I watched, I noticed that this film follows an eerily similar narrative format to J. Edgar; both are framed by older versions of their subjects reminiscing about their lives, with only a slight difference of context – J. Edgar Hoover was dictating his memoir while Thatcher is in the throes of dementia. But I think that if Clint Eastwood‘s film had followed this one it would have been more warmly received, because Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) seems more out of her depth, awkwardly splicing stock footage with dramatizations and creating overwrought political scenes in which male characters deliver their dialogue to the camera – a similar first-person approach was used to highlight gender differences in The Silence of the Lambs, but here the effect is too on-the-nose, as if Lloyd is shouting “Sexism! Feminism!” in every frame.

Meryl Streep is very good as Thatcher, but in a movie starring Streep it’s usually a reasonable assumption that she’s good in it. Aided by convincing makeup, she disappears into the role in all time periods: from up-and-coming politician, to formidable world leader, to her frailty in the modern day. As she also proved as Julia Child in Julie & Julia, she’s a gifted chameleon, but she deserves a better screenplay, one with more to say about its subject, and a director with more to show us than how well Meryl Streep can play Margaret Thatcher. The film is built around her strong performance, but both the film and the performance would benefit if they were built around a stronger character.

Dir. Steven Spielberg
(2011, PG-13, 146 min)

War Horse feels like Steven Spielberg trying on a nice-looking pair of shoes that don’t quite fit him; he walks with an awkward, uneven gait (unlike the steady confidence of his Adventures of Tintin, which was released on the same weekend in the US). I could sense him affecting a style not entirely his own, channeling an old-fashioned sentimentality. Make no mistake, Spielberg has his own brand of sentimentality, but to me this feels broader, more artificial, applied self-consciously to achieve an effect that doesn’t quite work … Read the rest of my review at Culturazzi.

Dir. Miranda July
(2011, R, 91 min)

I saw Miranda July‘s first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, when it was released in 2005, and I was enchanted by its unique perspective on human connection. But six years passed before July wrote, directed, and starred in her second film, The Future, which flew under the radar when it was released, appropriately enough, last July. It’s not as good as Me and You. Expanded from a one-woman performance piece she developed, it’s even quirkier, to the point of sometimes getting in the way of its characters and themes – for example, the narrator is a terminally ill cat named Paw-Paw. One has to push through walls of strangeness to get to the film’s humanity, but once we do we find a resonating compassion.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater), a pair of Los Angeles thirtysomethings getting a jump on their midlife crises. They’re about to adopt Paw-Paw, who is not expected to live very long, but compassion for a poor, unfortunate animal is not their primary motivation. What they’re really looking for is a short commitment, so when they’re told the cat could live as long as five years in their care, they panic. In five years, they’ll be forty, and it’ll be too late to make something of their lives. What follows is a series of fumbles and missteps as the pair wander about in search of purpose, but not knowing where to find it, or how, or why. They say life is what happens while you’re making plans. This film is about characters who are planning to make plans.

I rented The Future on DVD and watched it a second time with the audio commentary by July, and an additional viewing makes a significant difference. The idiosyncrasies that felt alienating at first – the talking cat, a talking moon, a crawling t-shirt – are easier to reconcile. Some of them still don’t work – the significance of a little girl sleeping in a hole is still a mystery to me – but other magical realist touches are even better upon reflection. There is a turning point at which Jason decides he must stop time, and later struggles to start it back up again. Was this supposed to be taken literally, I wondered at first. In such a film by such a director, it may as well be taken literally, but it’s also a poetic way to describe how heartbreak can bring your life to a halt. You can’t move beyond that moment, don’t want to, but eventually you have to. That’s reflective of the entire film; Sophie and Justin are standing still for fear of moving forward, but finally they move forward for fear of standing still.

Dir. Lars von Trier
(2011, R, 135 min)

Death is the only certainty in life. I believe that’s the core idea of Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia, a breathtaking film that crept up on me slowly, and when it was over I stayed in my chair, alone with my thoughts. For a while it seemed that the director was using imminent extinction as a metaphor for mental illness – there’s a planet on a collision course with Earth called Melancholia, because calling it Clinical Depression would have been too on-the-nose – but it’s not only the depressed Justine (Kirsten Dunst) who struggles with the end times. Von Trier shows that ultimately all of us must, at one time or another. Whether this particular planet hits us doesn’t matter. One day our planet will come.

The first half of the film introduces us to Justine on her wedding day. She arrives with her husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), and they are the picture of wedded bliss. But as the night wears on she finds more and more excuses to wander away, and finds it harder and harder to return. Her smiles and joy, we discover, are just the performance of a role others expect her to play, and Dunst conveys the sheer exhaustion of faking her way through. But there are no villains in this wedding party – except maybe her contemptible boss (Stellan Skarsgard) and bitter mother (Charlotte Rampling), both of whom use the occasion to promote their own cynicism. In particular I was struck by the loneliness of Michael, who clearly loves his wife and is aware of her depression, but is faced with constant rejection when he tries to reach her; her depression is something for which no one is to blame, but which takes everyone as its hostage.

The second half of the film switches gears to her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who has a rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) and a young son (Cameron Spurr). She does not suffer from depression, per se, but with such a mother and such a sister she suffers by association. She experiences mortal anxiety upon the discovery of a planet called Melancholia, which is nearing Earth but will only “fly by,” as scientists predict. It is when the film focuses on Claire that it becomes deeper, more mysterious, and more transfixing than a mere allegory of existential gloom. Justine is neither surprised nor afraid of the planet; she has given up on life so completely that she can scarcely rise out of bed. But what about Claire? Most of us will recognize ourselves in her more than in Justine. She fears death, as most of us do. It’s a fear that grows larger over time until we can see it peeking out at us over the horizon.

Melancholia is similar to The Tree of Life in how it considers the grandeur of the universe against small, fragile human lives, but von Trier is focused where Terrence Malick seemed to fumble in the dark for his own meaning. This film has a profound urgency and moves with grim momentum. In late scenes the director uses sound to remarkable effect, creating a steady rumble of dread that could be the very manifestation of his characters’ turmoil.

This is only the second von Trier film I’ve seen, following Antichrist, which is as bad a film as this one is good. Both take a fatalistic approach to existence, but this one has a clarity and humanity the other film lacked. Antichrist, a cruel and meaningless exercise in nihilism, was all about punishment. But although the filmmaker still shows signs of personal anguish, this time it’s informed by empathy, which is something I hardly knew to expect from him. Melancholia evolved as I watched it and may continue to evolve in my mind over time. When it begins it’s an oddity of abstract images. By the end it comes full circle as a sad testament of mortality. When all is said and done, it achieves greatness.

Dir. Sunu Gonera
(2007, PG, 104 min)

I’m usually lenient towards films with their hearts in the right place, but is Pride‘s heart really in the right place? It is such an assembly line of cliches that it doesn’t seem like its heart is anyplace. No genuine feeling seems to have been involved in its making. It’s ostensibly based on a true story, but funny how so many sports movies based on a true story end up being the same story, with the same characters and the same story arc, the same conflicts and the same resolutions. Reality serves as the raw material, is stripped of what makes it unique, and then is delivered into the marketplace as comfortable, “feel-good” product. It is to movies what artificially flavored fruit drink is to juice.

It tells the story of Jim Ellis – played by Terrence Howard, poor Oscar-nominated Terrence Howard – a swimmer forced out of the sport by segregation, who in the 1970s takes a job with the Philadelphia Department of Recreation to help dismantle a neglected youth center. Instead he rehabilitates it and turns a group of wisecracking street kids into a formidable swimming team. The screenplay, which is credited to four writers I will be kind enough not to name, provides Jim with a grizzled old sidekick (the late Bernie Mac, who deserved better), a love interest who at first doubts him (Kimberly Elise, who deserves better), and a villainous rival swim team that no doubt arrived from the rink across the street where they faced the Mighty Ducks. The coach of the rival team is played by Tom Arnold, and even he deserves better. Critic Gene Siskel had a simple litmus test: “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?” Pride isn’t even as interesting as the lunch menu.

But wait, there’s more. One of Ellis’s swimmers is a shy boy with a stutter, and, wouldn’t you know it, he’s entrusted to swim the anchor leg of the Big Race; “You can do it!” insists the team captain. The boy is reluctant, but the captain insists that it’s not how fast he can swim that matters – “The anchor’s gotta have the biggest heart!” Though from what I understand of the rules of a swimming competition, the guy who swims the fastest usually wins. There’s also a terrible subplot about a local thug who tries to bully Ellis’s swimmers into committing crimes for him. What is his criminal enterprise? We never find out. At one point he talks about making a “delivery,” which sounds about as sinister as driving the UPS truck. In the middle of the film, a female swimmer is introduced to the team. Who is she? Where does she come from? Beats me. She materializes out of thin air at the youth center and ceases to exist when there’s no pool around; she may be some kind of sea nymph.

You know that classic fake-out scene where one person appears dejected and says something like, “[Main character], I don’t know how to tell you this, but … we won!” This film has one of those too, and it goes on for so long that the person being tricked doesn’t even play along. This is a very bad film, scavenged from the bones of better rip-offs, to the point where the filmmakers don’t ever seem to have had an original thought, even by accident. They say even a broken clock is right twice a day. This is a broken clock without the hands or numbers.

Dir. Andrew Haigh
(2011, Not Rated, 97 min)

The UK drama Weekend joins a tradition of ships-passing-in-the-night romances that also includes Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and the great, under-watched In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which are about couples who forge brief, intimate bonds and then part ways for reasons of circumstance. A time limit raises the emotional stakes even as it lowers them; there’s no need to guard yourself from someone you will only know for a short time, yet there is also an urgency to make the most of it and a feeling of melancholy for what must inevitably end, so during that period the relationship burns hot and bright, but afterward it stays warmly lit in the embers of memory. I have never had such a relationship, though having seen such films I almost feel like I have, and I think I’d like to someday. It’s not exactly something you can plan for.

Russell (Tom Cullen) is a lifeguard at a public pool, and Glen (Chris New) works at an art gallery. They meet one night at a gay bar, get drunk, and have sex. Russell has no expectation of seeing Glen again; it’s not clear whether he’s ever been in a long-term relationship, but flings and one-night-stands seem to be his common practice. Glen was in a relationship at least once before but isn’t planning on one now; at the end of the weekend he’s leaving to study art in the United States.

Director Andrew Haigh

After their first night together, Glen surprises Russell by asking him to recount their encounter on tape; he’s collecting confessionals for an art project intended to demystify gay sex. This odd request is indicative of the fundamental difference in their personalities that creates a push-and-pull tension between them. Glen had a negative coming-out experience as a teenager and has become bold and confrontational in regard to his sexuality. Russell was raised in foster care, didn’t have many close relationships growing up, and is uncomfortable sharing intimate details with anyone, even his closest friend. They challenge each other’s biases and assumptions, and many discussions end in an uneasy stalemate, but they come back for more because in their discomfort they’re forced to consider things about themselves they hadn’t before.

The film does not strain for psychological analysis. Russell’s aversion to public displays of affection doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of self-acceptance, and Glen’s avoidance of romance doesn’t necessarily mean he’s nursing a wounded heart. We can reach those conclusions if we like, but writer-director Andrew Haigh doesn’t lead us in any one direction or another. He seems more interested in the development of intimacy between them, how their seemingly incongruous experiences, expectations, and desires unexpectedly bond them. To call it a case of opposites-attract would be too simplistic, I think. Rather, their lives intersect at the right moment for them to provide what the other needs.

The film feels natural, as if captured spontaneously, but it’s also directed with measured focus, with simple camerawork that reveals without getting in the way. A great burden rests on the actors, who must perform what is for the most part a two-hander and convey the full development of a relationship over a very short period of time. They both succeed, especially Cullen, who has the more difficult role to play; Russell’s shyness requires Cullen to express a great deal internally, yet the performance is so lived-in we hardly notice him acting at all. The depth and complexity of these characters drew me in and left a strong impression, perhaps nearly as strong as the impression they leave on each other.