A recent trip to the vibrant city of Chicago took me to the Gene Siskel Film Center on State Street -- Valhalla for the foreignfilmguy. (I take that back: Cannes, the Oscar ceremony, or even Sundance would be Valhalla. But the SFC is a shrine on par with Manhattan's Film Forum or the Anthology Film Archives, at least). The 11th Annual European Union Film Festival was beginning a month-long run. I have fond memories of seeing some great foreign films courtesy of the EU: first at the AFI theater in the Kennedy Center (Claude Chabrol's La Ceremonie); then at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, MD (Antares from Austria is the only one that comes to mind).
Much as I love Houston, we just don't get that quality of film 'down here.' In fact, the bleak art film scene has gotten bleaker (the Greenway 3--R.I.P.; Rice Cinema -- a shell of its former glory days). So rather than waste my time with the increasingly irrelevant WorldFest Houston -- longest-running film festival in the U.S. (only God, the Devil, and Hunter Todd knows how it survives!) -- and the smattering of mediocre French comedies that penetrate the market, I am going to devote 2008 to seeking-out the top-of-the-line indie and foreign films. If that takes me to Austin, Seattle, San Fran, or the mean streeets of Manhattan, so be it!! More likely, it will take me to NetFlix -- plus, I want to do more reading, so I can contribute to my second blog, www.goodreads.com.
An aside about Chicago:
I had a genuine a celebrity sighting at the Art Institute of Chicago!! I had just spent two wondrous hours in the joint Winslow Homer watercolors and Edward Hopper exhibits, and who was buying a ticket as I was leaving? The lovely Heather Graham (Swingers, Boogie Nights, Gray Matters, From Hell, Scrubs...I could go on). Regrettably, I didn't say anything to her. What could I have said: "Loved your work in 'Emily's Reasons Why Not.'?" (That is a 100% true statement, btw, but I did not want to sound sarcastic). She looked as beautiful in person as an actress with a faded AC/DC T-shirt and furry boots can look!
I hope you loved Edward Hopper as much as I did, Heather!!
Two outfits -- one pose!
Back to the purpose of this post: My 1st Review of 2008!
Francis Ford Coppola's return to filmmaking in Youth Without Youth:
I went into this movie blind: not knowing the story, the source material, or the critical reception it received. But I still had expectations: somehow I thought I'd have a David Lynchian-Inland Empire experience. Instead, what I saw was rather tame and literal. True, the 'literal' plot takes off in wild and imaginative directions--hallmarks of a typical Eastern European author upon which this work is based. [Aside #2: this is the second movie I can remember based on a novella that is interminable!! What's up with that? See (or better yet, don't see) Away From Her.]
It starts as an intriguing story of an intellectual who gets struck by a lightning bolt that returns him toikok youth so he can finish his life's work (well-acted by Tim Roth as both an old man and a young one). Yet the two-hour, six-minute movie gets bogged down in a conventional yet ridiculous Nazi subplot: it is not enough that the Nazis are 'bad', they are badly acted, too. (The young Nazi seductress invites comparisons to Sofia Coppola in her looks -- a good thing; and in her acting--not a good thing). While I'm making comparisons, Roth's love interest in the movie (Alexandra Maria Lara) is a cross between Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley--not a bad cross!
I could live with the retro style of the film if it strived to be a straight action movie (like last year's Black Book) or a straight homage to the Golden Age of Movies (like the superior The Good German, which it consciously evokes on more than one occasion). But Youth refuses to play anything straight. It meanders wildly from one style to another, as the story meanders from Romania, to Switzerland, Italy, India, then finally Malta. [I cannot say I've seen many movies set in either Bucharest or Malta, so that is a nice diversion!] By this point, however, I've lost all interest in the plot, so I have to make do with the scenery.
Coppola is still a master, but as with One From the Heart, I question his choice of material to devote his considerable talents. I imagine that's how fans of director Darren Aranofsky felt coming out of his latest, The Fountain (which I purposefully skipped, even though it starred Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman).
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