Sarge 2.0 goes to the movies!

[Sarge 2.0]

Haha thanks a lot Eggy.

 

[Hunter Rider]

Thanks a lot man, that really means a lot to me.

Haha, I grew up with no knowledge of Frost at all, but my parents said that he was a lightweight tv host/celebrity interviewer whose career was on the down slope before the Nixon interview.

When I saw him he was in his older political interview phase, I'm gonna check Frost/Nixon out next week.

Btw I saw the Wrestler today, Can't wait to read your review of that.

 

[The FallenAngel]

I'm boycotting this thread!







You're not bad. I'd put you a notch or two above Armond White.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

**** you.

 

[Episode29]

I think its time for you to write a bad review. I'd like to see how your approach to reviewing, which utilizes detailed scenes and themes, works when dealing with something woefully pathetic.

I'll be writing my own reviews for Underworld 3 and New In Town tomorrow, and it dawned on me that I was curious how you write such a review.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

I'm sort of thinking about that. I'm seeing "Wendy and Lucy" this weekend, but maybe I'll see a flick like Underworld or something on top of it.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

Here's my review of Wendy and Lucy:

A woman and her dog walk through the forest and play together. The woman throws a stick, and the dog catches it before bringing it back. The camera follows them, as they move through the space on the screen, never remaining static, never jump cutting to a close up or another static shot. “Wendy and Lucy” is something you don’t see much today: it’s a movie where we actually get to watch the characters move, instead of just cutting to the front of them at each destination. We can see Wendy (Michelle Williams) actually go from one place to the next without having to fill in the blanks that the editing has left us. Most movies just use editing to cut movement, the editing of “Wendy and Lucy” embraces, even celebrates the way people move through the space on screen.

“Wendy and Lucy” is a film about loneliness, about poverty, about life, and the way life can derail itself when you least expect it. Wendy Carroll is a young woman who for whatever reason wants to get away from people; when the film opens she’s on her way to Alaska where she hopes to find a job at a cannery. Much like Christopher McCandless, Wendy sees Alaska as a place where she can be free. However, McCandless sought freedom from what he saw as a corrupt society and a broken home life. We never learn what specifically drove Wendy to make her way to Alaska, but it doesn’t matter much. Michelle Williams tells us everything we need to know about Wendy through her face, her mannerisms, her lonesome demeanor and the dejection we sense every time Wendy has to confront another human being.

Wendy’s dog Lucy heals Wendy with the kind of unconditional love that only animals and infants can show. Lucy is Wendy’s best friend; their bond is the only thing keeping Wendy emotionally connected to the world around her. So when Wendy’s car breaks down in Oregon and Lucy goes missing after Wendy spends the day in jail for shop lifting, Wendy is left completely shattered; the things that matter the most to her in the world have been taken from her due to dire economic circumstances. There’s a hint of irony in the fact that Wendy loses Lucy after being arrested for attempting to steal dog food. The clerk that catches her is a teenage sycophant who cruelly disregards the nature of Wendy’s predicament so that he can remain in good standing with his boss.

There aren’t many jobs in the bleak little Oregon town where Wendy is stranded, during one of her conversations with a friendly security guard (Wally Dalton) Wendy bemoans the fact that “You need an address to get a job” so she couldn’t work even if jobs were available. The security guard grows to like Wendy, and he shows her generosity and kindness. Will Patton plays a car mechanic who feels some sympathy for Wendy when he breaks the news that it would cost her $2,000 to repair her car, but his hands are tied by the nature of his business.

Michelle Williams’ performance as Wendy is remarkable. We don’t need to know the story of what came before the events of the film; the emotional context we need is provided in the way Michelle Williams uses her face and her body language. She is uncomfortable making eye contact with people; she carries the demeanor of someone who has continually been beaten down in some form or another. Someone or something hurt her badly; she is broken through no fault of her own. No clunky plot details are necessary because they would mean nothing to the immediate story. We are witnessing one chapter in the life of Wendy, and in real life we don’t know everyone’s story all of the time. People move in and out of Wendy’s story and she moves in and out of theirs without ever knowing most of their names. We move through this chapter with her, the cinematography and editing allow us to witness every step. Director Kelly Reichardt has crafted a film with uncommonly good spatial sense, and that’s something you don’t see every day.

The comparisons between “Wendy and Lucy” and “Into the Wild are accurate to a degree. Both involve young people who journey to the fringes of society and live on the edge of an economic abyss on the way to an Alaskan destiny, but Christopher McCandless was someone who left society behind because he felt that the world around him contradicted his ideals. Wendy may have left the world behind, but I believe that the world left her behind first.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

So no one else saw this movie?

 

[The Original Bamfer]

You did... and that's all that matters.

 

[Episode29]

So no one else saw this movie?

I'd love to, but it has yet to open here in Vancouver...

...Well, that, and I've also been swamped with seeing crap like "The Uninvited", "Underworld 3" and "New In Town"...

 

[Sarge 2.0]

Ouch.

Also I've been listening to your podcasts, nice stuff. Very lively, interesting discussion.

 

[Hunter Rider]

Having seen Frost/Nixon on Saturday I feel your review was spot on Sarge.

 

[Episode29]

Ouch.

Also I've been listening to your podcasts, nice stuff. Very lively, interesting discussion.

Holy smokes, someone listens to those other than myself and my sister? Awesome!

Yeah, they're a lot of fun to do, even though I occasionally put my foot in my mouth pretty badly. Especially in the last one. I could edit that stuff out, but its more entertaining to usually just leave it.

You should try doing one too. They're a blast to record, and help you significantly in verbalizing your opinions (something I need to improve on, I feel).

 

[Sarge 2.0]

Holy smokes, someone listens to those other than myself and my sister? Awesome!

Yeah, they're a lot of fun to do, even though I occasionally put my foot in my mouth pretty badly. Especially in the last one. I could edit that stuff out, but its more entertaining to usually just leave it.

You should try doing one too. They're a blast to record, and help you significantly in verbalizing your opinions (something I need to improve on, I feel).

Haha I'd need to find an audience first, and possibly another person to do it with. But it's always something I've wanted to try.

 

[Episode29]

Do you have a blog yet? You should set one up ASAP to post your reviews on. More accessible to outside interest, neater formatting and slightly classier. You can write well, get one started and keep 'em coming. Your chances of getting some sort of recognition (my blog showed up on the CBS news blog. I have no idea how that happened) increase exponentially, and you will have a better portfolio to act as a representation of your work.

Hell, I'll also plug it for you on my podcast! Then my sister will be aware of it! LOL.

Oh, and I was thinking at school today that, if your interested in testing the waters podcast wise, I'd be totally game to including 5-minute reviews or something from you on the Epi-Cast. They could be a feature of some sort. You'd just have to record something short and email it to me. I'd be sure to give you full recognition and pimp your blog/whatever. I dunno, just an idea. Our next one will be around the 13th, so you have plenty of time to consider.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

I'll be talking to someone about setting up my own blog soon, and once I get it started I'd love to do a little contribution to your podcast.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

It's been too long since my last update. Here's my review of a classic: Werner Herzog's 1972 masterpiece "Aguirre, the Wrath of God"

[...]Directed by Werner Herzog, the film tells the story of a doomed conquistador voyage down the Amazon in search for the El Dorado. The expedition is initially led by Gonzalo Pizarro, who abandons the quest by putting Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra) in charge and leaving Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) as the second in command. The open shot is breath taking, the conquistadors trudging down winding Amazonian terrain through the mist and fog, foolishly clad in armor and finery, looking like ants against the awe inspiring jungle terrain.

The conquistadors don't realize that their armor won't save them from the jungle, and it certainly won't save them from the arrows of the natives. And there's something pitiful about the women of the expedition; they're dressed in exquisite clothing and are carried on sedan-chairs by their servants. They're expecting to arrive in El Dorado in style, I suppose. Unfortunately, the jungle is indifferent to their clothing and their status: they are as powerless as their servants against the unforgiving cruelty of nature.

The Spaniards and their party quickly begin to die, one by one. Aguirre appoints an "emperor" who is to take power when they reach El Dorado, but the "emperor" is flabby and ineffective. Fever, hunger, madness, and paranoia overtake the expedition, and to make matters worse, the natives begin showing their hostility by picking off Spaniards with their arrows and their jungle traps. You rarely even hear the arrows, and you almost never see where they come from; its as if they're being shot by the jungle itself. The party drifts further and further down the river, always hoping that El Dorado is close, but as one of the natives says "On this river God never finished his creation"; the river might as well be endless, because the conquistadors will never reach what isn't there.

Eventually, the mad Aguirre takes command of the remaining party and he hastens their journey towards oblivion. Kinski is incredible as Aguirre; his leaning posture and strange manner of walking - almost limping - suggests constant observation and calculation of his surroundings. When given a close up of his eyes, we can see them burn with madness and determination. The final scene of the film is one of the most powerful I've ever witnessed: Aguirre drifts alone on the raft that is littered with the corpses of his party, including his own daughter who is silently shot through the stomach by an arrow that seemed to come from nowhere. Monkeys overrun the raft and Aguirre, overcome by madness still plans his dynasty. He picks up one of the monkey's so that it resembles a mewling babe in his grip, making himself God of that raft and its populous. Then, surveying the beginnings of his new kingdom he asks "I am the Wrath of God. Who else is with me?"

Who else, indeed.

Originally posted at Le Soft Parade

 

[Episode29]

Hmmm... You know what just dawned on me, reading this review? That your approach to writing is heavily informed by scholarly film criticism, which tends to detail the facets of the entire plot in great depth, adding insight throughout. While I love writing those type of articles, I'm more of a journalistic film "reviewer" type I suppose... In one aspect you do those type of pieces very well, namely your gift for easily flowing narration. The wording in this piece is often impeccable and inspired. What I'd recommend, in tackling future reviews such as this, is to pick up a film theory book (I'd recommend Louis Giannetti's Understanding Movies. It's a godsend!), read up and try to insert even more in-depth analysis. That last line is a killer, and would be served immeasurably by an even stronger lead-in.

All in all though, great work, and effortlessly readable.

If you're at all interested, I posted reviews of my own in the Friday the 13th thread (I guarantee that THAT one is gettin' ripped apart) and another in the The International thread.

...We should really start a thread for serious film criticism on here or something. The other attempted ones are too diluted by awful writing and meandering thoughts to serve any real
purpose...

P.S.: Any news on the blog front?

 

[Carmine Falcone]

That movie is a classic. Very bizarre, very twisted and hypnostising. It really clicked with me on second viewing. It's a 90 minute movie that really crawls by, but it's never boring, know what I mean?

Whilst I agree with Episode29 on the statement that the review is highly readable, I think it's kinda silly to focus on the plot of this movie in the review. There really isn't any. This is above all a mood film, and you could have focused on that maybe a tad more.
Plus your review doesn't offer any insight on the movie I haven't read before. But maybe that's because it's such a often-reviewed film.

 

[Sarge 2.0]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. And on the blog front things are slow moving, but I'll get there. I'll respond to both of your posts in detail when I'm not tired/lazy. In the mean time, here's my review of "Waltz With Bashir"

Between September 16th and September 18th in 1982, Lebanese Christian forces forced Palestinian civilians in to the two refugee camps and began to murder them. When the smoke cleared, anywhere between 328 and 3,500 innocent Palestinians were dead. This event became known as the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Israeli filmmaker and war veteran Ari Folman realized that he had no memory of his service in Lebanon twenty years ago, specifically the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. Folman was stationed only a few hundred yards away from the slaughter, even though he believes that he had witnessed its aftermath. Unfortunately, the only thing that his brain will allow him to remember is a strange vision in which he and his comrade’s rise naked from the water that surrounds a dilapidated Lebanese city while women wail in the streets and flairs fall from the sky. Folman set out to reconstruct the events of his past and regain his memory, and that reconstruction became the animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir”.

The use of animation in this film is groundbreaking, it depicts the hallucinations, nightmares, memories, visions, and thought processes of the people involved. It would be possible perhaps to depict these things in live action but live action footage could never do justice to the surreal workings of the human mind. The brain never creates a 100% accurate snapshot of an event from the past, even for people with eidetic memory, so it either “fills in the blanks”, dissociates, creates elaborate hallucinatory visions, or it just erases some things completely. The sleek, visually enthralling animation of “Waltz With Bashir” handles these things perfectly, with a certain visual logic that is akin to the logic of dreams.

The film uses multiple perspectives as a way to construct the events that Folman could no longer remember, the pieces of their memories are used to construct an account that comes as close as possible to the truth. He interviews his friends and ex-comrades, as well as others who were present in the area such as Israeli war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai and another veteran named Ronny Dayag who recounts a vivid memory of swimming out to sea in order to escape Palestinian hostiles. Folman also talks with his psychologist, who provides him with useful information on the nature of memory. For example, Folman is disturbed by the prospect of discovering the truth behind his strange vision because it might reveal something that he did not want to know about himself; his psychologist assures him that his brain created that vision because Folman wanted to know something about himself; if it was something Folman did not want to know, the brain would have erased the vision entirely.

The title of the film comes from one of Folman’s recovered memories in which his long time friend Shmuel Frenkel snapped in the heat of battle and began firing his machine gun wildly in the middle of the street that was covered with posters of the recently assassinated Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel; Frenkel was dancing a perverse waltz with Bashir. Eventually Folman remembers that the Israeli forces were stationed in circles at various points around the refugee camps at the time of the massacre. They were all aware of “something” happening, and yet for some reason no one – not even top brass military officials – questioned what that “something” was. It was as though they were allowing it to happen, on account of ignorance.

“Waltz With Bashir” is a powerful, once in a lifetime film that deals with the complexity of memory as well as some unsavory qualities present within human nature. It asks the question that so many have asked for so long: in the case of genocide, are the perpetrators or the facilitators equally guilty? Are the actions of one party more inexcusable than the other? These questions may be impossible to answer with any degree of certainty. But like Ari Folman, people can discover the answers to questions they have about themselves. And sometimes those answers bring us closer to understanding impossible evil.

 

[Star]

I'm still dying to hear what you think of Rachel Getting Married....

Actually, have you ever thought of comparing a remake and an original? I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Awhile ago I compared the original Dawn of the Dead (which is amazing) to it's remake (which is horrible).

 

[Hunter Rider]

Sorry I'm late, Ive just read the 'Aguirre' review Sarge, you have a great way with words without a doubt, but I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the greater aspects of the film than hearing the plot right through, you write it very well I just like to get the reviewers feelings on the various aspects of the film.

I can say having read your review I am most certainly gonna check this movie out as i did 'Let the right one in'.

 

[The Shape]

...Well, that, and I've also been swamped with seeing crap like "The Uninvited", "Underworld 3" and "New In Town"...

But...why?

 

[Hunter Rider]

But...why?

Because he's a movie reviewer I believe.

 

[Episode29]

Because he's a movie reviewer I believe.

LOL. Yes, but, as many here would tell you, my credibility is questionable.