This is a fairly prominent documentary that my wife asked to add to our usual list and it’s no wonder why it made waves. The subject matter is so intriguing and so humanistic that it lends itself naturally to film. It’s also worth noting that nearly every documentary I’ve covered so far in this blog involves significant ethical questions and this one is no different. In fact, given that the producer and primary driver of this project, John Maloof, is the person who is mainly responsible for popularizing this artist after her death, the ethical issues here may be more thorny than usual and makes for a fascinating study in its own right.
Despite what it must sometimes look like, I don’t pick films to watch based on whether or not they’re from a country I haven’t covered yet. This one popped up on the best films of 2014 lists of multiple critics and yes, not only is it the first Ukrainian film I’ve ever watched and it’s also the first film I’ve watched that is entirely in sign language. This means that there isn’t one single line of spoken dialogue, plus as a deliberate decision by the film makers there are no subtitles or translations of any kind as well.
I got this as a recommendation from a number of different places and one of them was the videogame Max Payne 3. The game included a level that was set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and Rockstar cited this film as one of the references they used. The film itself was a massive success in its native Brazil, both commercially and critically, and its sequel is the single highest grossing film in the country. Not bad as the feature film debut for its director José Padilha.
My wife was complaining the other day that it’d been a while since we’ve watched a romance movie. She’d also recently mentioned that some of the only kind of humor that she can appreciate are Woody Allen movies. Everyone Says I Love You has all that and is a musical to boot, thus killing many birds with one stone. It’s particularly known for featuring singing performances by famous actors not known for their musical talents.
It seems like we’ve been seeing actor Oscar Isaac everywhere these days, beginning in Inside Llewyn Davis last year, David Simon’s excellent miniseries Show Me a Hero recently and of course the new Star Wars. But what made me interested in this film is that it’s the third feature film by J.C. Chandor and that both of his previous works were amazing. It helps as well that it made it onto the best of the year lists of multiple critics at the end of last year.
It’s Star Wars so it has open with the trademark slow text crawl. I’m okay with that even though I’m bored of it after six movies and innumerable videogames. Next comes a long, tracking shot of the familiar wedge shape of a Star Destroyer, except from a novel angle. Homage. I’m down with that. But when we see Max von Sydow wearing clothes that make him suspiciously resemble Alec Guinness and the McGuffin being hidden in this iteration’s version of the lovable droid, I start cringing. Long before it recreates the cantina scene, to seek transportation to boot, or show the shadowy, disfigured behind-the-scenes big bad via hologram, I’ve realized this isn’t so much a continuation of the original trilogy as a beat-for-beat remake.
This is the first film by Malaysian-born but long since Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang to be covered in this blog though my wife has watched quite a few of his films. She notes that this one once again stars the director favorite actor Lee Kang-sheng and I read that the trio of actresses who appear in it are part of his usual cast.
