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Famous Nathan (2014)
a masterpiece
This movie contains the whole of the immigrant experience in America throughout the 20th century. it's a movie about family, betrayals, friendships, loyalty, work ethic, father and son relationships and the rise and fall of Coney Island as told through a polish immigrant's hot dog stand turned empire.
Nathan Handwerker is the man who traded his life for success in business. so dedicated was he to making Nathan's what it eventually became that all else fell by the wayside. praise and encouragement to those around him was in short supply. as one of his former employees states the best one could hope for from Nathan was silence as that meant he had nothing else to complain about. it doesn't mean he was a joyless man-he and his longtime wife raised children and many of those same former employees have nothing but kind things to say about him later on. but like any driven man he was not happy unless tending to business mostly at the cost of all else and along the way jealousies between himself and his brothers as well as one son (who shunned Nathan's entirely and opened his own restaurant) created fissures in the foundations that eventually took the one time Coney Island staple down. the company went public, fancy offices were opened in times square, franchises were licensed out that didn't work mostly because Nathan-who never approved of any of this in the first place- couldn't watch everything and was too old to effectively do so at that point anyway.
So much of "Famous Nathan" is so moving it feels as if it were being told to you be your own grandparents and elderly aunts and uncles. through old videotapes and audio only sessions recorded from the 50s to the 80s these people (who are often hilarious in a way only old Brooklynites can be) are candid in such an intimate way that the director and grandson of Nathan himself-Lloyd Handwerker-effectively becomes our surrogate brother through what could be a million different immigrants tales of success and failure in the new world in the early, middle and later 20th century. best movie i've seen in 2015.
Week End (1967)
are you gonna eat that?
this might be the snottiest film i've ever seen. Godard at his most antagonistic.throughout he is looking at us and saying"what are you gonna do about it?" just about every shot is in defiance of some kind of filmmaking rule or preconceived idea of what a director should,or could,put on screen- most notably the shootout near the end between the revolutionaries and the opening sex monologue.this is the film (i think) that established Godard's agenda that capitalism is bad and by logical extension the USA is to blame for most of the world's problems.how else could it possibly end but with one main character cannibalizing another?
the story in a nutshell is of 2 unlikable people-a married couple who can't stand each other-trying to reach the husband's uncle's house to claim some kind of inheritance.husband and wife both hoping to keep it for themselves.along the way the run into an epic traffic jam (a beautifully done tracking shot),a couple of people dressed like Lewis Carroll characters,Jean-Pierre Leaud dressed as a napoleonic era soldier and again later as a young man with a fancy car among others until finally running into a group of revolutionaries.the screenplay has its similarities to the odyssey or apocalypse now as the couple's journey gets increasingly surreal and bloody as the road to oinville is increasingly littered with wrecked cars,dead bodies,and the colors red,white and blue.i really admire JLG'S hubris here especially the end credit which declares this film to be the end of cinema.the sex pistols (or John Lydon i should say) declared rock and roll dead after they disbanded and i was thinking a lot about them during this most punk rock of films.it's not that you necessarily buy that JLG,or Lydon either-and obviously history hasn't borne them out-but you certainly believe that THEY believe it.i think that's why the movie has so many people who love it and conversely the people who hate it still respect it for the same reason.as for me this may be the only movie i consider "great" that i really don't like..not that i don't like it,i do buuuut...i don't know..maybe this Mark Twain quote sums up how i really feel about it:
(i'm paraphrasing) if a man at the age of 20 is not against the establishment in all its forms then he has no heart.if the same man hasn't joined that same establishment by the age of 30 he has no brain.Godard might be a genius but he sure as hell has no use for that quote...age 35 2/10....age 22 10/10...but that's just me...
Margaret (2011)
untolerance by JD salinger
god i love it when i find a movie i know nothing about and it has me in its grip after 15 minutes.Anna paquin gives the performance of the decade as an upper class NYC Jewish girl who shares part of the blame for a fatal bus accident.paquin plays it large-her character is a quasi- existentialist with Buddhist leanings,liberal,idealistic and a raging hormone machine.she's that typical teenage mixture of angsty self righteousness and completely self absorbed asshole,delicate,sensitive yet will go for throat at the drop of a hat...and she would've fit in nicely with salinger's glass family.or maybe Wes Anderson's tanenbaums..the movie plays like a novel-rich characters (the woman who plays her mother deserves some kind of award and the woman who plays the victim's best friend is equally brilliant)-and like real life at the same time- conversations interrupted,people speaking over people-director lonergan frequently mixes background conversations at the same volume as the main characters.it just feels like NYC...Lisa Cohen is one of the great modern day characters...
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
the good,the bad and the ugly
let me start by saying i liked the last batman a lot.give a good director unlimited resources and you'll get a good movie...usually.it's definitely not as good as the second one but how could it be?heres a a brief checklist:
the good: the character of bane is really excellent.genuinely scary with a great vocal effect-part john Huston in Chinatown with an English accent and part Daniel day lewis channeling john Huston in Chinatown in there will be blood filtered through Stephen hawking's computer voice with reverb.
Anne Hathaway is smoking hot.
Marion collard is very pretty
Gary oldman again resists chewing the scenery
hearing Michael Caine pronounce "ras AL ghul" is good for a chuckle
the movie never drags
the opening airplane sequence / bane's introduction was excellent as was bane's backstory/origins..
the big twist at the end involving Miranda Tate (Marion collard) was very clever.did not see that coming
the bad:
Marion collard may be very pretty but i hope i never have to listen to her mangle the English language again.this woman is not an asset to your repertory company Mr.Nolan.i forgave her in inception,but here..ugh
Anne Hathaway is totally wrong as catwoman.a good actress who i like a lot but not here.bad casting-it needed somebody a little more punk rock,a lot more punk rock in fact-Hathaway is about as edgy as a bagel.even the ultra horrible, wooden-eyed Kristen Stewart would've been an upgrade.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the "hey,he's robin isn't he??" subplot was a mystery for about 30 seconds
squeezing in a cameo for cillian Murphy was not necessary
why was Gary oldman in the hospital for so long?and if he really was in need of such intensive care why was he able to get up and fight off 5 bad guys?
how the hell did comm.Gordon and his fellow exiles make it off the ice after being sentenced by scarecrow (cillian Murphy)?
Bruce Wayne goes to a doctor who tells him he's in worse shape than Joe Namath and the movie completely forgets that meeting ever happened.really.."Mr.Wayne you have no cartilage left in either knee"."OK,thanks.I'm going to rappel down the side of the building now"
the ugly:
listening to Michael Caine pronounce "ras AL ghul"...
i know it sounds like I'm hating on this movie but I'm justing having a little fun with it.i really did like it a lot...
Na srebrnym globie (1988)
are you sure andrezj done it this way?
only a truly gifted artist could make something this uncompromisingly weird-it makes lost highway look like an episode of meet the press.okay,let's take a story about a few astronauts leaving earth and landing on a distant planet.the astronauts die off relatively quickly and their children grow up at an accelerated rate-the children spring into being btw,no copulation is ever hinted at much less shown-so quickly as to reach their tenth (or so) birthdays in a matter of days.the children welcome the next visitor,presumably from the planet poland,as a god...and i'm not sure what happened after that...that last sentence which probably took you about ten seconds to read is the only synopsis for this 2hr30min minute film i can muster.and i have no idea if what i wrote is even remotely accurate.to say i didn't really follow this movie is besides the point,its greatness lies not in its storytelling abilities so much but in the tough to discern netherworlds of aura and atmosphere.whatever the holy mountain,electra,my love,mulholland drive,blood of a poet or the other 2 giants of polish sur-reality,the saragossa manuscript and the hourglass sanatorium have-this movie has too.i lack the ability to describe sufficiently all the films i've just mentioned so all i can really tell you is that after i watched on the silver globe i knew that i had liked what i had seen.yes,it's totally insane but it's not bad...just don't ask me why....
The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town (2010)
darkness on the edge of bruce
my favorite part of this bruce doc was the part when he and steve van zant are kind of fooling around/working out a part to a song in the studio after everyone else has already left.there's no cocaine,liquor-not even a single beer-or groupies that would've been in any other famous band's scene.while(insert 70s rock star name here) would've been enjoying his downtime relaxing and getting his blah blahed or taking any number of drugs bruce is working on his music-one gets the feeling that's how he unwinds,that's what the man does for fun.another thing i always just assumed was the 3 year gap between "born to run" and "darkness..." was because he was constantly touring.i had no idea about the legal stuff and i know bruce and the e-street's history pretty well...very solid documentary-i wish they had included more of the old footage but all in all-solid.
Carlos (2010)
we're only in it for the money-the history of carlos and post-punk
i'm going to be brief since i think the other reviews of "carlos"already posted will give a good idea of the film's brilliance.i wanted to point out the genius use of music in this film-the post-punk songs specifically.as goes carlos down a road of egotism,gluttony and sloth so to does the the soundtrack mirror exactly how post-punk devolved from an idealistic,naive,and yes,somewhat innocent art form into a cold hearted mercenary whose original goals and beliefs had long since washed away into a sewer of profit margins,marketability and celebrity.it's no accident that the film opens with wire and closes with the lightning seeds.with a few changes this screenplay could very easily be re-packaged into the johnny rotten/john lydon story.the story of another man who thought the revolution was completely about himself...this is the best film of the past 5 years IMO.even better than mesrine,che and the baader-meinhof complex-3 other similarly structured historical bio-epics that are great films themselves,but not in "carlos" league.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
"You see what happens Larry!"
Amazing!Finally a movie that makes you feel stoned as opposed to wishing you were stoned to enjoy it(Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,the entire Cheech and Chong recorded output)Genius moment #1.During the dude's blackout sequence after being slipped a mickey by Jackie Treehorn he's dressed like Karl Hungus in the porno movie he sees in Maude's apartment.Genius moment #2.Little Larry never utters a single word during the most inept interrogation scene ever filmed."You're killing your father Larry".Genius Moment #3."...And I a'int never see no queen in her damned undies" and every other line uttered by Ramblin'Sam Elliott in this out and out classic that even the Greenpoint hipsters and sport reporting steaks who quote it bible and verse can't tarnish.
Fandango (1985)
Gardener Barnes-champion of youth!
In one of the great performances of all time Kevin Costner stars as the doomed,James Dean obsessed gardener Barnes.His future all but void as he finishes(not graduates)the university of Texas,Mr.Burns(as Truman Sparks calls him)assembles his crew of groovers for the last best road trip of their lives.The movie's loaded with suspension of disbelief flaws and overdone,kinda hackneyed symbolism.Take for instance,the skydiving sequence as an example of both.Or the fireworks shootout at the graveyard as an example of the latter.Or the impromptu wedding ceremony that closes the film...actually no.Completely unforgettable,that scene.When Gardener realizes his best friend really is marrying his one true love,that he really is past the best days of his life,wow.The unflappable Gardener tells Phil(Judd Nelson) at one prior point that all love mostly is,is "thoughts".He'll never grow old enough to realize how wrong he is.what an amazing character,that you love with all his flaws.Just like this movie.