The Final Take with Parker Mott

An entry in the 2012 Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, ON.

The Captured Bird breaks the illusion of death with a fantastical tale both abstract and visually bizarre, and yet strikingly literal in its message – death is alive, and it feasts on the curiosity of our younglings. First-time director Jovanka Vuckovic finds a style with an unsettling mix of grace and dread. Her imagery moves in harmony, developing a lyricism that the score – performed by Redeemer (Passion of the Christ, Hostage) – elevates with its eerie blend of beguiling chimes and a remorseful violin. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(123 minutes)
*EXCLUSIVE TO SHORT CUTS

I half-expected a conversation of quarter pounders in this scene.

Out of Sight is no Pulp Fiction but when it wants to be it knows how to play game with Elmore Leonard. It is based on a book by Leonard, so it aptly gets the humour right. It stars George Clooney and Ving Rhames in, what I assume, is the Travolta-Jackson role from Tarantino’s masterpiece. It’s a film about crooks and cops who are not good at being crooks and cops. Their biggest profession is language – dialogue is their (and the film’s) greatest weapon.

Jennifer Lopez has a role as a state marshall and, since this is directed by Steven Soderbergh, she has to frustratingly fall in love with the bad guy - who is in fact our hero. The whole story is essentially a heist movie, and doesn’t exist in the arbitrary, roaming, and tense world of Pulp Fiction. What happens in Out of Sight is tightly plotted while being frayed by the endless banter and jarring violence. It’s a film about love or – more accurately –  romantics interrupting the no-strings-attached criminal business. Something Soderbergh loves to tinker with. The film is perhaps smart for smart’s sake but it works nicely not as a thriller but for a film that is too much of a wise ass for that genre.

3 Stars out of 4
(122 minutes)
*EXCLUSIVE TO SHORT CUTS

A villain turns good and cradles our heroes in Castle In The Sky.

The opening to Castle In The Sky proves animation can be action-oriented, and smart. Such characteristics remain in the meandering, at times too bombastic Castle In The Sky. It’s about a young Princess Sheeta (voiced by Anna Paquin) who carries a blue orb that will guide her to the floating castle Laputa (a name originating in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels), a fortress aloof and the destination that stores our characters’ hopes and desires.

Sheeta is acquainted with a miner boy named Pazu (v.b. James Van Der Beek) and they embark on a mission that involves them fleeing from pirates and the military. It’s a whimsical tale, ridden with action and a little bit of swashbuckling between the two protagonists. Miyazaki bombards the action here but it never flushes out the cuteness of this spectacle. Castle In The Sky is about hopes, dreams, and the temptations of gliding free. The film also believes villains can become heroes too, and - for me - that’s enchanting enough.

2 Stars out of 4
(126 minutes)

blood is spilt hard core in 13 Assassins. That may be for you.

You’d be a fool not to be reminded of Kurosawa in Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins. A little dose of Seven Samurai there, and a head sliced off of Yojimbo there. Yet this film, a remake of a 1964 version, lacks any depth or discovery.

Where Yojimbo rediscovered the raw realism of the Japanese jidaigeki genre, 13 Assassins just spins the genre’s wheels. You have 13 assassins. None of them are very bright, bold or interesting. They work together like a barrage of stereotypical Sanjuro’s - the character from Yojimbo meaning Mulberry Field. I admired Kurosawa’s existentialism, wry humour, and precision in his films like these, but 13 Assassins lacks those beneficial qualities. Miike shoots the film very calmly, like an Ozu work, in the first half. Then he explodes into a Tarantino pyrotechnic in the second half.

I grant 13 Assassins has a terrific final showdown that brings back the rough and awkward fighting power of samurai warriors, whose presence in feudal Japan was disintegrating in the late 1800s. 13 Assassins goes for the tragic irony of Yojimbo and falls short. I revered Kurosawa for reminding us that this is not a world for the traditional samurai, but it may not be one for corruption and modernity either. So what fits? 13 Assassins doesn’t answer this question probably because it is best unanswered.

I found the film, though, exhaustingly generic and predictable. The final blood bath is incredibly shot and stylized but runs on for so long you feel the sweat. Miike is a talent and if you have seen Audition, one must agree he has spirited ambitions. Those seem repressed here in a film that cuts its own hand off and forgets to fix the wounds.

3 Stars out of 4
(102 minutes)

A uncomfortable sequence played out with an insouciant suspense.

American Psycho was the first example of Christian Bale’s potential as an actor we could love and hate simultaneously. His character is infected with such little self-preservation that his role never implores for our sympathy. In fact it mocks it, which draws us in subliminally. Bale plays the wealthy, womanizing Patrick Bateman - a man of great outer charm, but unalloyed darkness behind his eyes.

Why I enjoyed American Psych is for director Mary Herron’s understanding that this is not about a mad man but about a personality. This is an interpretation of a full-bore persona, his magnetism is in his volition to kill and wreak havoc. Bateman is an exploiter, a user, but he loves Genesis. He has simple tastes, but has this irrational motivation to kill. If we see Bateman as a killer, the film loses its texture. I saw Bateman as us, society, government, and economy. He is so content with his malignant nature that he seeks no way to resolve his insanity.

American Psycho is a commercial for the American state of mind. Its narcissism embodies Bateman like a virus and soon seeps into us. We never understand why characters are being killed, but it is just Bateman’s fun. He is a free spirit, who may in fact just be experiencing his own twisted reverie. Who knows what the conclusion reveals, but American Psycho is a taut drama of a man with no soul. His eyes burn with passion, but we sense no human here. Bateman is of his own but Bale knows exactly that way beneath this a man representing the American Psycho - and with good taste. I love Genesis.

3.5 Stars out of 4
(121 minutes)
EXCLUSIVE TO SHORTCUTS!

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg share a chuckle when under fire.

It took a few views to “get” Hot Fuzz. Maybe the first few times I felt its action was just turning it into the flaws its very satire is victimized by. When I watched it again, I laughed hard. The film has this glorious self-awareness of its style, its overly indulgent special effects, and absurd storyline that action films always try to deem realistic.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the opposites attract duo. Pegg is a hard-nosed cop, playing it way too dangerous in the innocuous British country town of Somerville. Frost’s apathy seems to stem off his role in Shaun of the Dead. Well, so does Pegg. These are essentially the same characters from that zombie romp masquerading as cops. Direction Edgar Wright has this ability to put the characters not in the action, but running about in their own cliché action film. It loves to be derivative.

The ending goes on far too long. Maybe that is what Wright is poking fun at. At any rate, the film maintains its self-reflexivity, totally aware of when the climax is coming and where everything is going. Wright’s penchant to transition the film through black silhouettes passing the frame is a fitting way to propel the pace along the plot. Oddly, the editing is what makes Hot Fuzz great. It does not allow the film to slow down and explain itself; it just cuts and makes everything a gradual action.

Watch out – Hot Fuzz moves fast enough that you may miss the satire. I did the first time. We can commend it enough for regurgitating the classic cheese line in Bay’s Bad Boys: “Shit, just got real.” Hot Fuzz not only is a movie of inspired action, but ridicules what clearly is motivating it.

3 Stars out of 4
(87 minutes)
EXCLUSIVE TO SHORTCUTS!

The doorman represents the lower-class pride of the coming Italian neo-realism.

This will sound absurd, but The Last Laugh is one of those unprecedented silent films that goes its whole duration with very little dialogue. It is directed by F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu) who manifests the film with a mobile camera, whipping from one point to another to give the film a feeling of urgency. And even in one shot, the mobility embodies the pathway of sound.

The Last Laugh is nothing much in story, but it forms a simple yet genuine heart around a hotel doorman, played by Emil Jannings. His performance carried so much poignancy and tender complexities that America summoned his talent and gave way to a great career (Jannings would appear in Quo Vadis? and The Blue Angel).

The Last Laugh was hailed during the 1920s as the greatest film ever made. That was Murnau’s tagline and incentive into directing Sunrise – produced by an American corporation, Fox. As a silent film, I prefer Sunrise and I am not sure if The Last Laugh deserves a “greatest” term. When you think the film should end, it doesn’t. It spirals into a final segment, where our friend the doorman receives some poetic justice and a last laugh.

I wish instead of jumping to this arbitrary end, we found out how we got there. Murnau’s visual style is coming to life and The Last Laugh has remnants of genius. But there is something very important in seeing how the last laugh arises to make us laugh too - and if Murnau is good enough (he is), make us cry.

2.5 Stars out of 4
(108 minutes)
EXCLUSIVE TO SHORT CUTS!

Fair Game.

In Fair Game, when battling for the truth against one of the most powerful governments in the world, you enter a chess game. The government holds all the knights and you hold every pawn. A man, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), has such a passion for the truth he endears a labyrinth of conspiracy, lies, and betrayals while trying to keep his family together and the rapport with his wife Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts). She is a CIA agent whose name is leaked to the public after her husband writes a polemical editorial to the Washington Post.

The irony of Fair Game is that there is no fairness or rules. The government wins because it has power and it protects the people. When the people question that power, it turns away from them - and perhaps attacks. This movie Fair Game is directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) and he bases it off the memoirs of Plame.

The film has the right anger and angle to it but just does not take off enough. It juggles itself between thriller and conventional bio-pic and never fully engages. The first half is incredibly slow, but is meant to build up a web of lies that will soon be inanely challenged. There is just no point trying to overpower a political force, but there is no problem in making a statement. Fair Game has been criticized for its distortions and counterfeit scenes, but I can only expect so much…

I do like Plame’s final lines regarding that the government can take the truth and destroy it, but not her family. Luckily, Penn and Watts are strong enough to make the family believable and feel torn apart when it needs to seem that way. The film grapples with the tension within a country as it panicked, went to war, and got confused with their own morals. Wilson notes in a final speech: “a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked what government he had given us. Franklin said…”

A Republic, m’am. If you can keep it.

2.5 Stars out of 4
(138 minutes)
EXCLUSIVE TO SHORT CUTS!

The intoxicating beauty of North Africa.

I felt The Sheltering Sky exploited too much of its erotic themes and did not protrude it at the right times. Director Bernardo Bertolucci (1900, Last Tango In Paris) has transcended the difficulty of sexuality and its tendency to act as a barrier to certain will power. The Sheltering Sky is the opposite approach to Bertolucci’s classic “love story”. What happens is travellers Kit (Debra Winger) and Port (John Malkovich) Moresby are on an expedition through North Africa (in 1947) just after the World War, where Mussolini had occupied parts of the continent.

Oh, I should note: For the Moresby’s the difference between a tourist and a traveller is a tourist thinks about going home the minute they arrive to their destination. A traveller may never consider going back. Interesting contrast, much of the Moresby’s relationship is infected with the tourist – just “love” itself is not fulfilling enough and it is always looking back the other way.

The Moresby’s try to fulfill their fantasies and copulate (literally) on the precipice of their marriage. As a terrible calamity occurs half way through the film, it is Debra Winger who pulls through as the frayed, tarnished, but indefatigable Kit, who develops the feminine grandeur of a T.E. Lawrence.

The film itself, based off the 1949 work by Paul Bowles, does not fulfill the requirements of his text. The Sheltering Sky has difficulty pointing out the transformations and amidst all its glorious cinematography (it was all done on location), you could not help but feel the film got the look down, just not the lyricism. When the film concludes on the voice of the estranged narrator, we feel confounded not riveted. The use of the supporting roles, such as Timothy Spall and Campbell Scott seems more like a luxury to the blank spaces than a tactic to generate emotion.

3 Stars out of 4
(131 minutes)
EXCLUSIVE TO SHORT CUTS!

Al Pacino is the crux as Shylock.

William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice was written between 1596 and 1598 and it has to be one of Shakespeare’s most profound works. It speaks wonders about 16th century antisemitism, skewed law, and civil unrest. Its title refers to Antonio (Jeremy Irons), but the play is central to Shylock (Al Pacino) - of whom Shakespeare introduced as: “extreame crueltie of Shylock the Iewe towards the ſayd Merchant.” Pacino plays the role right in that his Shylock is as flawed as any Christian. He manipulates the law in attempt to earn one pound of flesh from Antonio.

The Merchant of Venice is considered a tragic comedy, but director Michael Radford disassembles the mechanics of comedy and enforces the pathos. The sadness is the payoff. I wish there was wit though, enough to engage us in Shakespeare’s brilliant blend of the serious aspects of bigotry and alienation and the hilarious nuances of character flippancy.

Al Pacino makes The Merchant of Venice good. He delivers the “Hath not a Jew’s eyes” speech with confidence, fury, and ironic power. Shylock was a man of tremendous gumption, aptness, and courage. But his burrowing motive is that he is on a quest for revenge. It is the law that provides him with that liberty and the hypocritical canon of law that alienates him from Venice. The tragedy is the Merchant lives.