Sunday, August 14, 2005
I'm Watching As Fast As I Can
The Netflix Queue marches on:
Well, we saw the Wachowski's 1996 Bound and it was really hip. When movies pander to coolness they are sure to be yesterday's newspaper as far any lasting value or honorable claim to your attention. It had its moments, it was well mounted, the performances were all good, but the dark story needed more layered irony, less glistening surface; the sensibility of the movie had a fascistic undertow. Actually, it seemed close to a rip-off of Friedkin's excellent 1985 movie To Live and Die in L.A.
Signs was a movie I looked forward to because I liked M. Night Shyamalan when I heard him on Howard Stern and I really enjoyed The Sixth Sense and I love the ET sci-fi movie genre. I was rooting for the silly thing. When I listened to Night's commentary on the DVD he seemed to have no inkling that the movie had foundered — it was a joyless ride. Even Mel Gibson of the cow-like stare who nevertheless usually turns in a workmanlike performance was flattened, sunken in the miasma. So self-referring and self-congratulatory is the Hollywood community that everyone who spoke on the commentary — as has been the case in most DVD commentaries — was grrreat and an artist, a real artist, and so good and yet, who knows how it happens, most movies are stinkers.
Altman's 2003 movie The Company was so enjoyable. Somehow Altman's films don't have scenes; rather they flow directly into your memory as something experienced. A film about a dance company could not have been better suited to Altman's talents — he said on the commentary that it was an experience like making Nashville, a more complex, richly textured triumph. Altman has some sort of energy that makes people feel comfortable and work at their best, so all the technical aspects from the look to the sound to the cutting seemed fully rounded, complete, successful. How a man who seems just below the surface to be touchy and defensive can at the same time, in his work, be so convivial and relaxed, is a paradigm for the transformative in art. The Joffrey of Chicago had some excellent pieces on display — I was particularly taken by the broken lighting, which seemed just perfect. Although there were inevitable dead spots in a movie like this, which is a strange meld of documentary and fiction, viewed impressionistically, at a distance, with no true story line, my only real disappointment with the movie was that the piece with the dancers appearing on a shadow screen was so starkly, elegantly beautiful I would have loved to have seen the whole piece. Bob knows how to leave them wanting more…