Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

As the movies have shown us, if not life itself, growing up is hard. In particular, that awkward pre-teen/teenager transition from middle school to high school can be especially difficult. Children, being the relative newcomers to existence that they are, tend to be socially untrained and unrefined (i.e. themselves). It doesn't take many years of communal education though before the "normalization" process begins to occur, putting extreme pressure on any personalities deemed too unique to conform, or suffer the consequences.

This awesome terror put upon the fragile psyches of blooming adolescents can have a number of different effects, but for introverted among us, the all too common occurrence is a detachment from the world that surrounds us. Like a war correspondent reporting from some exotic, savaged landscape, the name of the game becomes observation and survival. Keep your head down, keep your eyes open, and stick to the sidelines, hoping that when the day is done, you'll come out unscathed.

Review: End of Watch

 



Have you ever watched an episode of Cops and thought to yourself, "Gee, they should really turn this into a movie! That would be awesome!" Well, if these words, or somwething approximate, have flown through your television-saturated brain at somepoint, then your wait is over and your wish has been granted.

End of Watch follows the lives of two blue-collar, street-level LAPD cops, Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena). Using the conceit that Brian is filming his daily life as an assignment for a film class, we watch through the lens of an "amatuer" handheld video as the two cops patrol the streets, bust some baddies, shoot the breeze, uncover the nefarious dealings of a Mexican drug cartel, and live the typical lives of LAPD beat cops working in the grimy sections of the "City of Angels".

If this summation is giving you an odd sense of deja vu, that's no coincidence, because "typical" seemed to be the governing philosophy behind pretty much every aspect of this movie.

Toronto Film Festival 2012

If you have been disappointed with 2012's cinematic output thus far, keep the faith, because I come bearing good news.

The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6-16, and with it came premieres and sneak peaks of some of the mostly highly anticipated films releasing in the latter half of 2012. This was my first time at the festival and I have to say, it was an absolute blast. For any cinephiles who have considered attending the festival, I can't recommend it highly enough. It may have been due to the overall high quality of the film crop, but I can think of few events that would be as enjoyable for film lovers as this year's Toronto Film Festival was.

I know you don't care about my own personal experiences though and would rather hear about the movies, so let's get down to business.
Below is my ranking, from least favorite to favorite, of the ten films I saw at TIFF 2012. As you will see from my ratings, even the lowest ranks films of the lot had aspects to admire, which just speaks to the high level of talent on display at this year's festival. There were a few films, such as The Master, Seven Psychopaths, A Place Beyond the Pines, and Amour, that I had really wanted to see but was unable to. For the most part though I heard great things about all four of these films, and when you add these in conjunction with the films I saw, plus the highly anticipated films not at the festival (Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Lincoln, Life of Pi, and Zero Dark Thirty just to name a few), and regardless of your opinion on 2012's slate of movies up to this point, you can't help but feel things are shaping up nicely for the back half of the year.
Anyway, without further ado, my 2012 TIFF experience:

Oscar Predictions: A Shot in the Dark

     

      I can hardly believe it, as it seems that we just wrapped up last year's awards season not all that long ago, but the start of the 2011 awards season is almost upon us. In less than a month's time, buzz from this and that festival will start to shape the landscape for the long trek of the moviedom awards rat race that culminates (usually in a pretty anti-climatic fashion) with the Academy Awards ceremony in late-February. Like the beginning of every sports season, now is the time when hope reigns supreme. Every film with an actor who, at least at one time, meant something, with a director who has shown signs of promise either now or in the past, with a writer who has contributed to some significant films, or even with a synopsis that sounds sufficiently "awards-baity", clings to the idea that they will be the breakout sensation of the year, and frankly, as far as we're concerned, why not. With the exception of the privileged few who have had the opportunity to see some the year's end films before the rest of us, we have no idea which films will be this year's "The King's Speech", and which films will be this year's "Hereafter". Obviously, for would-be Oscar prognosticators such as myself, this makes the task of predicting the Academy's taste nearly impossible at this point, but that's kind of fun of making guesses this far out. If something actually pans out, you look like a sooth-saying genius, and if you miss almost everything, no one thinks to hold you responsible. Only upside!

     In terms of film's that already released this year, so far there are only two that have received any significant Oscar buzz: Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" and Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris". For frequent readers of this blog, you'll know my extreme adoration for Malick's "The Tree of Life", as the only articles I have written as of late have been nothing but excuses to gush over the film. Having given it a perfect 10 in my review of the film, I have a hard time imagining any film released later in the year topping it, but even, so I am somewhat doubtful of the film successfully navigating the rough waters of the Oscar season and taking home the Academy's top prize. The film is too esoteric, too experimental, too untraditional to win the Oscar for Best Picture, no matter how deserving it is. The only way the film has any chance in hell of having a successful awards season is with heaps and heaps of critical praise, which so far it is mounting, receiving the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or back in May and more recently, earning FIPRESCI's (an international film critics body) film of the year (calendar running from September-to-September, meaning it beat out film's such as "The Social Network"), but as David Fincher's excellent "The Social Network" proved last year, often times even all the praise in the world from the highest sources of film criticism aren't enough to budge the Academy's stubborn affection for traditional sentimentalist filmmaking.

     As for the other film, Woody Allen's most popular film in years (and I believe his highest-grossing film ever, not adjusting for inflation), "Midnight in Paris", I would bet strongly on it receiving a writing award (Allen has been nominated many times for this award even when the film itself did not receive support in other categories), but outside of this I'm skeptical of it's chances. It's a good film (probably my favorite Woody Allen film since 1999's "Sweet and Lowdown"), and I could very well see it ending up in my top ten list at the end of the year, but with the Academy's new rules in the Best Picture category, where the number of nominees in the category is variable and depends on how many film's receive over 5% first place votes, I have a hard time picturing the film getting an enormous amount of 1st place ballots, given the light and fun nature of the story.

Filmography: Terrence Malick

    

    As some of you may have noticed (if anyone is still out there), the frequency of posts on this blog has dropped significantly over the last few weeks. My weekly retrospective Oscar article "If I Picked the Winners" has ceased and with the exception of some new trailers and one or two reviews of some of the summer's newest films, I haven't been on the ball in terms of updating this blog. The reason for scarcity of new articles is due to some work I am doing on side projects, and in all honesty, the sparse posting rate will likely continue for a few more weeks. I've missed writing articles for this blog though, so I thought I would take a breather from some of the other things I'm working on to introduce a new feature for auteurfan: Filmography. The idea behind Filmography is to review the entire body of work from an auteur (and maybe some actors too). It won't be a weekly article like "If I Picked the Winners" was (which I do plan to pick up again at some point), but I will periodically pick an auteur, discussing his style and imprint on cinema, and than rank his (or theoretically her) entire filmography, from my least favorite film in their repertoire to their absolute best.

     For my opening edition of Filmography, I thought I'd start with the auteur who has been most on my mind this summer: Terrence Malick. The enigmatic filmmaker (he never does interviews and hasn't allowed a photo of himself to be published since the 1970's) is coming off the success of his highly praised new film "The Tree of Life", starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. The film (which is semi-autobiographical) is loosely based on a family growing up during in Waco, Texas during the 1950's, but it is more a menagerie of images contemplating and reflecting on the nature of existence. I recently reviewed film (which if you missed it, you can check out by clicking here), where I gushed over it's philosophical prowess and general brilliance, given it the highest ranking of 10. The film is easily the best film I've seen this year, and even if that isn't much of an endorsement (and so far it isn't), and encourage every filmgoer to go see it (keeping an open mind and adventurous attitude toward non-narrative filmmaking).

     "The Tree of Life" may be the culmination of what Malick has been trying to get across since his feature film debut in 1973, "Badlands" (a review for which I wrote here). Even within the confines of the film's narrative about two young lovers who go on a cross country killing spree, staples and themes are established that Malick has dealt with in every film since. In terms of raw filmmaking techniques and trademarks, the reliance on reflective narration by either the central protagonist(s) or some secondary observer (usually spoken in a hushed voice and mannered pace), revelrous shots of nature from the ground (or human's ) perspective, and measured pacing that let the film's events unfold instead of being foisted on the audience, all can be found in Malick's first film all the way through his last. In particular, in Malick's obsession with nature, I think we find the driving force behind Malick as an artist.

     Malick again and again comes back to man's relation to nature, and his love/hate relationship with his caretaker/captor, as his primary concern. A philosophy-major Rhode Scholar at Harvard who then went on to Oxford where he attempted to get a PhD in philosophy, but left after a falling out with his advisor (his thesis was unsurprisingly to be on Martin Heidegger, another man obsessed with man's place in nature), Malick's philosophical roots are always at the forefront of his films. In fact, the intellectual nature of his films are one of the hallmark signs of a Malick film. Ironically though, even though philosophy (outside of film) is one of my favorite subjects, the cerebral flavor of Malick's films has always been a barrier stopping me from embracing his work to the extent that others have. It's not that the ideas he presents are so beyond the grasp of the human mind as to make them indecipherable, even if hidden, they are usually plain (but interesting) enough to comprehend, but they exist in such a realm of the mind to almost dehumanize them. At times, his films have an almost academic feel to them, as if we were God study his creatures, like scientist watching lab mice attempting to navigate the maze we have built for them. In other words, they lack a certain subjectivity, making them feel a bit icy in their staunch objectivity. The result (for me anyway) is I end up admiring them more than loving them (although this is not the case with my favorite Malick film).

     The thing that Malick is famous (notorious) for is his slow work rate. Since his debut feature in 1973, Malick has made an astonishingly few 5 films, which includes a twenty year break between his second feature, "Days of Heaven" (1978), and his third feature, "The Thin Red Line" (1998) (most of the absence was spent teaching in France). His sparse output though has only added to his mystique and has made the release of his films eagerly anticipated epic events. Even during his long hiatus though, Malick did not abandon film altogether, as he continued to develop ideas during his cinematic fallow. In particular, through much of the 1980's he was developing a project simply referred to as "Q", which would explore the origins of life on earth. Although he eventually ended up abandoning the project, some of the ideas lasted and appeared in the wonderful "evolution" sequence in "The Tree of Life".

     Since his return to film in 1998, his work rate has steadily increased. After 1998's "The Thin Red Line", he was back with another film a mere seven years later (cut down from the previous twenty year span between "Days of Heaven" and "The Thin Red Line") with 2005's "The New World". For his next film, he managed to cut a year off of that for a six year difference between "The New World" and this year's "The Tree of Life", but now the unthinkable may occur. We may get two Malick films in two years, as he has already wrapped filming on his newest film with a release tentatively scheduled for some time next year. Nobody knows a lot about the film yet (right now it doesn't even have a title) other than the fact it supposedly fits into the "romance" genre, but it does sport an impressive cast that includes Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Javier Bardem, Jessica Chastain (from "The Tree of Life"), and Barry Pepper just to name a few. After the film's release, maybe I'll go back and place it among the rest of his work, but for now Malick has five films to his name, so lets delve into those films.

Scorsese's "Hugo" Gets a Trailer

     Given his amazing track record, whenever a Martin Scorsese film is released, my movie antenna is raised. Only considering his filmography over last decade, with his extensive collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio on such modern classics as "The Departed", "The Aviator", and "Shutter Island",  there is plenty of reason to get into a tizzy over the newest "Scorsese". This is why I placed "Hugo" (at the time titled "Hugo Cabret", which itself was shortened from the original title of "The Invention of Hugo Cabret") as my second most anticipated film of 2011 (a list you can check out by clicking here). Part of the reason I put the film so high on the list, other than Scorsese's impeccable reputation, is because it is the filmmaker's first foray into the "family" genre. A "family-friendly Scorsese film" seemed oxymoronic, which is exactly what peeked my interest. What would be someone who typically dwells in the dark recesses of 20th Century American Crime see in the "kids" film genre? What take would an auteur who consistently deals with conflicted emotions of hate and redemption be able to do fantasy world of imagination and wonder? We'll have to wait to later in the year to answer these questions, but I have to admit that my excitement to these answers have waned somewhat after viewing the trailer. From the trailer, "Hugo" appears to pretty conventional "family film" fare (aside from above par art direction), including the obligatory "uptight adult authority chasing whimsical children" sequence, but as any veteran filmgoer knows, trailers can be misleading, so I reserve final judgement for when I actually see the film later in the year. One things for sure though, between Scorsese's "Hugo" and Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin", this is definitely a year for high-profile directors family films.

Review: The Tree of Life

     Terrence Malick is considered by many as one of the all-time great auteurs. Even with his sparse work rate (he's made five films in 38 years, which includes a twenty year break in between his second and third features), he has still managed to craft a reputation for himself as a master of the craft.  Many profess their profound love for his work, citing each of his films as influential masterpieces that deserve to be put up among the pantheon of the greatest works in the history of cinema. Unfortunately though, I've never been able to get on the Malick bandwagon. While I admire and enjoy most of his films (read everything but 2005's "The New World"), there is always something about them that keeps me back a bit, something strangely distant about them. It's hard to pin down exactly what it is about his films that keep me from embracing them as much as I would like, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think I would say the problem with his films is a lack of humanity. With endless shots of nature and the environment surrounding his characters, the lives of the protagonists have always seemed secondary to his interest in the world barring down on them, giving them a cold, almost austere feeling.

     To cure this, I would have thought the answer would be to go the traditional route and focus more on the narrative, making the stories more character driven, like the films of some of my all-time favorite auteurs such as Tarantino and Kurosawa. Apparently I would have been wrong though, because the thing Malick needed was not to go more into the traditional narrative, but less. For this is exactly what he does with "The Tree of Life", only retaining the slightest semblance of narrative but paradoxically creating the most human film of his career , one of the most human films in the history of cinema. I wouldn't have thought it going into the film, but Malick's almost experimental "The Tree of Life" gives him a film I can embrace with total sincerity, whole-heartedly. Finally, a true masterpiece that belongs with the greatest films in the history of the moving image.