Not a great week for films reviewed by me. Probably the most significant is the Israeli offering Ajami, which was just rewarded for being too clever with its narrative dicing and not probing enough in its investigation of a multi-ethnic Jaffa neigborhood with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. I may be one of the only people who wasn't wowed by this one and although there is a lot to be impressed with, let's face it, when you get right down to it, Ajami is pretty thin gruel to be making any bold claims about. Also submitted for Best Foreign Film consideration (although unsuccessfully) was Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz's Terribly Happy, another film that didn't quite come off despite its share of merits. Still, both of these offerings (reviewed for Slant Magazine) are far better than the film I covered for The L, Falling Awake, a completely misguided film about a Bronx youth caught between his love of busking in Manhattan parks and the lures of his own rough-and-tumble neighborhood.Wednesday, February 3, 2010
New Releases: Ajami, Terribly Happy and Falling Awake
Not a great week for films reviewed by me. Probably the most significant is the Israeli offering Ajami, which was just rewarded for being too clever with its narrative dicing and not probing enough in its investigation of a multi-ethnic Jaffa neigborhood with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. I may be one of the only people who wasn't wowed by this one and although there is a lot to be impressed with, let's face it, when you get right down to it, Ajami is pretty thin gruel to be making any bold claims about. Also submitted for Best Foreign Film consideration (although unsuccessfully) was Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz's Terribly Happy, another film that didn't quite come off despite its share of merits. Still, both of these offerings (reviewed for Slant Magazine) are far better than the film I covered for The L, Falling Awake, a completely misguided film about a Bronx youth caught between his love of busking in Manhattan parks and the lures of his own rough-and-tumble neighborhood.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Directors of the Decade
Slant Magazine's best of the decade feature - and with it my ranking of the top 100 films of the last ten years - is still a couple of weeks away (in the meantime check out the site's great new look), but I wanted here to offer my list of the period's most significant filmmakers. Below are my top ten directors of the decade, the decade being defined per the common (if, incorrect) usage as 2000-2009. Jia Zhang-ke should be understood as my top choice - the rest are in alphabetical order. List of principal works include only those that I have seen.Jia Zhang-ke
Principal works:
Platform (2000)
Unknown Pleasures (2002)
The World (2004)
Still Life (2006)
Dong (short) (2006)
24 City (2008)
Cry Me a River (short) (2008)
Olivier Assayas
Principal works:
Les Destinées Sentimentales (2000)
Demonlover (2002)
Clean (2004)
Boarding Gate (2007)
Summer Hours (2008)
Claire Denis
Principal works:
Beau Travail (1999 - released 2000)
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Friday Night (2002)
L'Intrus (2004)
35 Shots of Rum (2008)
White Material (2009)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Principal works:
Millennium Mambo (2001)
Café Lumière (2003)
Three Times (2005)
Flight of the Red Balloon (2007)
David Lynch
Principal works:
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Inland Empire (2006)
Lucrecia Martel
Principal works:
La Ciénaga (2001)
The Holy Girl (2004)
The Headless Woman (2008)
Jafar Panahi
Principal works:
The Circle (2000)
Crimson Gold (2003)
Offside (2006)
Jacques Rivette
Principal works:
Va Savoir (2001)
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)
Don't Touch the Axe (2007)
36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup (2009)
Béla Tarr
Principal works:
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
The Man from London (2007)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Principal works:
Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)
Blissfully Yours (2002)
Tropical Malady (2004)
Syndromes and a Century (2006)
Phantoms of Nabua (short) (2009)
A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (short) (2009)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Akerman, Global Lens and Katrina Dogs
If Chantal Akerman is one of the world's most important filmmakers, you'd never know it from the spotty availability of her work. At least things are starting to change thanks to a recent rash of DVD reissues beginning with last year's release of her 1975 masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in a typically lavish two-disc set from Criterion. Icarus Films followed by issuing a DVD of her essential 1993 offering From the East and now, through their Eclipse imprint, Criterion fills out the picture of her early work with their three-disc Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. Now all we need is someone to make available her forgotten work from the '80s.My consideration of the Eclipse set can be found at Slant which also features a review of Mine, a doc about Katrina survivors separated from their pets, and a re-posting of my take on A Room and a Half from last year's New York Film Festival. For the Voice, I cover MOMA's Global Lens series.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Happy New Year Link Roundup
The holiday season behind us at last, the perpetual hangovers giving way to a measure of mental clarity, it's time to get back to business. And so, here's two weeks of pieces from Slant Magazine, the Village Voice and Artforum, the last featuring my review of early January's key release, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's terrific sheep herding doc Sweetgrass. Catch it while you can at Film Forum.Youth in Revolt (Slant Magazine)
Old Partner (Slant Magazine)
Streamers DVD (Slant Magazine)
Garbage Dreams (Village Voice)
Sweetgrass (Artforum)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
First Run Films Seen 2009
Here it is, the final tally: a list of all the films I saw this year that had their New York theatrical debut between January 1 and December 31, 2009 and played for at least a week (sorry Frontier of Dawn). Links to reviews follow where applicable.Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks)
Antichrist
Anvil: The Story of Anvil
Araya
Art and Copy
Avatar
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Beaches of Agnès
Beeswax
Before Tomorrow
Big Fan
Antichrist
Anvil: The Story of Anvil
Araya
Art and Copy
Avatar
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Beaches of Agnès
Beeswax
Before Tomorrow
Big Fan
Bruno
Coraline
The Girlfriend Experience
The Hurt Locker
Ice People
If One thing Matters - A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Import/Export
In Search of Beethoven
In the Loop
The Informant!
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Irene in Time
Ice People
If One thing Matters - A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Import/Export
In Search of Beethoven
In the Loop
The Informant!
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Irene in Time
Jerichow
The Limits of Control
Mock Up on Mu
Munyurangabo
Must Read After My Death
My Dear Enemy
My Neighbor, My Killer
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
New York, I Love You
Night and Day
Nine
Oblivion
My Dear Enemy
My Neighbor, My Killer
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
New York, I Love You
Night and Day
Nine
Oblivion
Owl and the Sparrow
Paper Heart
Paradise
A Perfect Getaway
Police, Adjective
Ponyo
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
Paper Heart
Paradise
A Perfect Getaway
Police, Adjective
Ponyo
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
Public Enemies
Somers Town
Sugar
That Evening Sun
Thirst
Thirst
Two Lovers
The Windmill MovieThe Window
Yasukuni
You, The Living
The Young Victoria
Saturday, December 26, 2009
"One of Those Navel Gazers": On Critical Objectivity
In response to a recent review I wrote of Police, Adjective for Slant Magazine, a film for which I had a good deal of admiration, but ultimately found to be unsuccessful, I received, via my editor, the following e-mail from a disapproving reader:Schenker's review is one of those naval gazers where the reviewers own attitudes toward the subject and disagreement with the film makers point of view causes him to wander way off the review reservation. Please remind Schenker a review is not about his agreement or disagreement with the directors philosophy, but to simply communicate the philosophy as well as the quality of the film making and acting.
Setting aside the writer’s obvious grammatical and syntactical infelicities and his vague notion of what constitutes a filmmaker’s “philosophy”, the response raises an interesting set of questions. Now whether or not my objections to Corneliu Porumboiu’s film were based on issues I had with his personal worldview is one that any reader can judge for himself by clicking on the link at the top of the page. (Personally, I think I objected more to the filmmaker’s methods, finding the way in which he shoehorned in a linguistic discussion at the movie's climax – despite the obvious precedents – far too academic). But is it in fact possible, or even desirable, for a critic to take issue with a film’s attitude toward its subject matter? Or must he try to remain as detached as possible and praise good work even if he disagrees with its fundamental premises?
First of all, I think we have to say that it’s useless to assume a stance of critical objectivity, since reviewers (like everyone) can only view work through their own specific worldview, colored as it is by their unique biases. But even if such objectivity were possible, would it not be harmful for a critic to overlook the assumptions (political, social, cultural) put forth by a potentially damaging piece of work? To use only the most obvious example, debate has long centered on the movies of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi filmmaker who fashioned such works of pro-Hitler propaganda as Triumph of the Will. Can we separate Riefenstahl’s technical achievement from its nefarious politics? Many would say yes, including, most famously, a young Susan Sontag who wrote, specifically referencing Riefenstahl’s films, “we can, in good conscience cherish works of art which, considered in terms of ‘content’ are morally objectionable to us”. But Sontag came to re-think her approach, rejecting the separation of form and content that made her previous assertion possible and realizing that it’s useless to speak of “grace” and “sensuousness” in films that exist to assert fascistic control both aesthetically and through their subject matter. But it was perhaps the late, lamented Robin Wood, a tireless champion of films progressive in their treatment of social and sexual politics, who put it best:
The alleged beauty of Triumph of the Will is a fascist beauty, centered on dehumanization, mechanization, the drive to domination, militarism. If one does not succumb to the fascist lure, one can only find the film uniformly boring and repellent.
But surely everyone can agree that the Nazis were evil. What do we do about less extreme examples, films that either espouse a political view different from that of the reviewer (but one acceptable to mainstream discourse) or whose general way of looking at the world the critic finds difficult to accept? This is a particularly sticky issue, but one that can best be resolved by setting aside notions of strict objectivity. As a critic, I can only write about a film from my own unique perspective (as anyone who sees a film can only form an opinion on the work based on their own biases, whether they like to admit it or not) and if a movie espouses a conservative political position or a juvenile cynicism about the world, I am probably unlikely to accept it.
Fortunately, in my experience, a conservative worldview often leads to an aesthetically conservative piece of work which means that films partaking of such questionable stances are less likely to be of interest. But what about a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino, a fiendishly clever director with a strong visual sense whose films trade in an adolescent understanding of life and rarely engage with any kind of world outside that of popular culture. Even when drawing on a period setting as Tarantino does in Inglourious Basterds, he simply uses the historical background as a means of putting forth his vile revenge fantasy. Yes, he may cleverly assert the power of movies to bring about a form of wish fulfillment, but this alternate history posited by Tarantino is little more than a reverse (and perverse) re-write of the Second World War in which Jews perpetrate the filmmaker’s trademark cynically humorous violence and Hitler burns to a crisp in a French cinema. So given my obvious distaste for Inglourious Basterds’ basic assumptions, if I were to review the film (I have not done so), should the gist of my review be that Tarantino cleverly achieves his ends and that the camerawork and acting are great? Hardly. It’s not so easy to tear apart form and content. Tarantino’s stylish flair is placed in service of a point of view I find repellent. His own filmmaking prowess (form) serves strictly to illustrate his film’s essential content (the positive power of film to change the course of history, i.e. exact bloody retribution). So how could any review I write of the film not address its fundamental worldview and discuss its form in those same terms. It couldn’t, but then again, what do I know? I’m just a navel gazer.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Year-End Polls and New Releases
Late December can only mean one thing in the world of film journalism: the annual proliferation of year-end lists and polls. The latest of these rankings to seek my participation are the Village Voice's annual survey (click here for my ballot) and The L Magazine's composite top 20 list (for which I contributed blurbs of numbers 16 and 18 and Independencia in the runner up section). Also for The L Magazine, I reviewed Terry Gilliam's latest The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, while Slant has re-posted my consideration of Police, Adjective, written during that film's run at the New York Film Festival.
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