Mud

A beautiful looking, fantastically written, acted and paced, all-round excellent film. Mud is a shining example of the upside to the bigger-is-better culture of Hollywood,

In my last post I spent a good deal of time dwelling on the problems with Hollywood's obsession with bigger and yet bigger pictures, built for the mass market. To be clear; I enjoyed my time in the cinema watching Man of Steel, and a good many other blockbusters of its ilk. Some of them are abominations though. I don't review them often, because I don't often bother to see them.

But here I want to focus on one of the upshots of modern Hollywood, and especially one that has come about with the recent proliferation of affordable digital film-making equipment. Mud is a relatively low-budget film - $10 million is pittance compared to $200 million superhero films - but it has all the professional production quality and artistic finesse of the best of those films.

Mud is directed by Jeff Nichols (who also directed Take Shelter, which I love). It's about two boys who live in the Arkansas delta - Ellis and Neckbone, born and raised on the river. Exploring the swampland, the boys stumble across an old boat suspended in a tree, and even stranger, a grown man living in it. The man's name is Mud. He has crosses in his footprints, and a snake tattooed upon his arm. The only things he values are his shirt, his gun, and the girl he's waiting for; Juniper. As they befriend Mud and begin to uncover his past, the boys are also being boys; living and learning as they throw themselves headlong at life.

Django Unchained

Django is by no means Tarantino's best - far from it in fact. However, by the very nature of what the film is about, it may wind up being one of the most important things he's ever done.

Films about slavery are few and far between. In my lifetime, I've seen one - Amazing Grace from 2006. Wikipedia lists twelve (three of those are set for release in 2012 or 2013). A scant few compared with  many hundreds - if not thousands - of films that have been made about the greatest crime against humanity in the twentieth century; holocaust films.

After the holocaust came a swell of films about the holocaust; providing an outlet for the widespread feelings of anger, horror, repentance and regret. They came from all sorts of countries, but German cinema especially was shaped by a generation of Germans looking back on their past. Likewise, in the wake of the Vietnam war, there were a flood of films that depicted the horrors that unfolded there, and called into question America's longstanding pride in superiority in warfare. The scars of the Vietnam war are still there, but it has been 'dealt with' on a cultural level. These films helped entire nations move on from the mistakes they've made; they are a result of and a part of the healing process. It's a trend that has gone on for centuries, and we see it now in today's trend of movies about wars in the Middle East.

But America hasn't finished dealing with its past yet. Django Unchained is an important movie because it is an American film about American slavery before the civil war. The practice is arguably more inhuman than the holocaust; treating entire people groups as animals to be commanded, traded, and bred. It was widespread around the world, and lasted far longer than the holocaust or any other genocide (for a solid rundown on the context of slavery, click here). And as I said before, there is relatively little in American popular culture that reflects on precisely what transpired across those decades.

Paris, Texas

The pace is slow going at first, but the drama is dynamite.An ultimately uplifting story of a man's quest to restore his broken family.

Oh, it says heartbreaker on that poster. There's a few ways you could read it, I guess.

You can also get it in formats other than videocassette nowadays.

Enough stalling, here's what this movie is about: a man is wandering through the desert in Texas, and runs out of water. When he makes it to a salon he manages to swallow a mouthful of ice before collapsing.

The mans name is Travis, we learn when Walt, his brother, comes to pick him up. Travis has been missing for four years, and has an 8 year old son now in the care of Walt and his wife Anne. Travis has amnesia, but slowly begins to remember his life before he went missing (though exactly where he went and what he did remains a mystery). He begins to develop a fresh relationship with his son, Hunter, a bright kid with an adorable charisma about him. Hunter's plans are equal parts childish and silly, and mature and useful. He functions as a kind of therapy for Travis, drawing him back to sanity after his bizarre long absence. Slowly, Travis becomes more and more fatherly to his own son.

Eventually, Travis decides that he needs to search out his wife, Jane. Walt and Anne still don't know what happened between Travis and Jane, or why the pair both went missing separately. I don't want to spoil the second half of the movie, because it's brilliant. Although the first half can drag at times, it builds to a powerful sequence in Houston, Texas, and a thouroughly satisfying conclusion.

The title; Paris, Texas, is a running 'joke' of the film. Inverted commas, because for Travis it's much more serious than a joke. His mother was from a town called Paris in the state of Texas, and his father would always hesitate before the word Texas; allowing them temporarily to believe his wife was French. It speaks to a broader motif of the film; of imagery, facades and deception. Walt's business is billboard construction, his wife is actually French, and the most apparently perfect character in the film. The town itself is never visited, only shown in a photograph... of an empty block.

It's a deeply layered film, its message delivered in the subtleties of the film making. It's beautifully shot, with characters who are well acted, but more noticeably well fleshed out. Every person in the film seems to act entirely within reason, and you can fully comprehend exactly why they act the way they do. None of this Hollywood villain crap; just real people, with real issues.

Alright, there are some pretty crazy issues, but they all seem to be in the past. What I took away from the film is the impression of a man who has made mistakes, and is trying to bring his family back together. To do so he must break the facades - or run away from them if necessary. His love for his son is evident in the lengths he goes to deliver him a good life; I found their relationship sweet and invigorating to watch (despite some sad moments).

Paris, Texas takes its time, but delivers with some extraordinary answers to its plaguing mysteries. There's a lot you could take away from it, but by the end of it, I was happy.



Seen Paris, Texas? Want to? Won't?
Leave a comment, start a discussion :)

Capitalism: A Love Story

Moore is undeniably charismatic and engaging, even if his methods are manipulative and extreme.

Explaining the problems of capitalism in a nutshell, it's Michael Moore, known for many controversial works such as Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11. This film did not make as much of a splash as those though, probably in part because money isn't as interesting as tragedy, and partly because most people will agree with what this film espouses (at least, to some degree).

The film was made in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, which resulted in the bailout of Americas biggest banks by the government. While I think it is by no means his 'Magnum Opus' (see the quote on the cover), it's interesting that this film seems to come full circle - he starts the film in his home city of Flint, Michigan, which was the subject of his first ever film, Roger & Me. Moore observes that the desperation and social decay that occurred there when the GM factory closed down years ago, is being repeated all over America with the growing power of the banks.

Mystery Train

Great characterization, clever narrative structure, and very entertaining. This film takes its time, but the world and the characters will grow on you.

Jim Jarmusch is an American independent filmmaker, whose name most closely resembles 'muscular', according to my spellchecker here (if you look at the guy though... he isn't.) What he is is talented, and Mystery Train demonstrates why.

The film follows three groups of characters, and their experience of one night in the city of Memphis. First, a young Japanese couple from Yokohama. The girly, Mitsuko, is bubbly and excitable and totally obsessed with Elivis; the guy, Jun, is quiet, aloof, cool, and prefers Carl Perkins. After exploring the town for a day, the two settle into a hotel for a night,  The second story follow Luisa, an Italian woman stranded for a night in Memphis; she flees some creepy strangers, and ends up in the same hotel. In the lobby she meets Dee Dee, who has just broken up with her boyfriend and needs a place to stay. The two agree to share a room together. The final story follows Johnny, Dee Dees former boyfriend, and Charlie, her brother. Through a complex chain of events, the two also end up crashing at the same hotel.

Platoon

Platoon is a classic war film that deals with the attitudes and actions of US soldiers in Vietnam. An intense experience, and essential viewing for war film fans.

First a quick note: having seen two war films in one day, I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of them. I do respect their craftsmanship and some of the messages they convey, but for a war film to be serious it almost inevitably loses a lot of joy. There are fun moments, in both Waltz With Bashir and Platoon, but they are dwarfed by the serious nature of their subject matter. I haven't seen a whole lot of them, for this reason, but there's no doubt in my mind that while Platoon is a great film, I'd sooner revisit the more sensationalist Where Eagles Dare because it's so much more fun.


Oliver Stone's Platoon follows a group of soldiers on the front-lines of the Vietnam War. The film, deservedly I think, won a slew of awards in 1986. It is a brutal vision of war (a response, Stone says, to the more jingoistic representations of Vietnam that came before), in which good and evil are far from cut and dry.

Mr Smith Goes To Washington

Even back then, Hollywood knew exactly what people wanted to watch...

In 1939 the Hollywood studio system was in full swing, and Frank Capra was cranking out drama films for Columbia pictures - a big name in the industry, from which we get a number of classics including It Happened One Night, It's A Wonderful Life, and this film: Mr Smith Goes To Washington.

This is a fun movie. It's about a guy who gets elected a US senator, by the machinations of a group of conspirators who need a stooge to vote their way for their profit. The man they pick is Mr. Jefferson Smith - leader of the boy scouts, and completely oblivious to politics. Over the course of the film we follow Mr. Smith as he struggles with his public image, his duties as a senator, and his purpose for being there. He's also totally overwhelmed with patriotic pride at being in Washington DC, amongst all the monuments and memorials to The American Way.