My wife did an excellent job reviewing Black Book yesterday. I can’t say I disagree with anything she said. The film (called Zwartboek in its native Dutch) didn’t work quite as well as it could have on a variety of levels. Danielle touched on a couple and I’d like to expand on them, mostly because I think a movie that comes close to working and doesn’t is far more interesting than one that either works on all sides or fails completely.
So, why doesn’t Black Book work?
As a World War 2 Movie
Neither Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan have anything to worry about here. While Black Book is aiming more for espionage than full-on warfare, the atmosphere of hope in the face of despair is better captured in Schindler’s List. There’s also some elements of Black Book that try to tackle how human nature, true human nature, is revealed in armed conflict. Saving Private Ryan does that better. This isn’t to say that Black Book is bad or inept in handling these things, they’re just not handled as well as they are in the other two films.
As an Ass-Kickin’ Jew Revenge Flick
Quite a few movies have come out recently featuring Jewish protagonists putting their kosher boots up the asses of those despicable Nazis. Munich, Defiance, Inglorious Basterds even You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, though that dealt less with Nazis and more with rednecks and terrorists. Anyway, I haven’t seen Munich and Defiance is similar to Black Book in that it’s a moody piece centered around a little-known aspect of the war. We all know about Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, Stalingrad and Hiroshima – the struggle for Belarus isn’t as famous. Neither is the liberation of Holland, for that matter. However, the best one of these so far remains Inglorious Basterds. As both a realization of the ultimate retribution of God’s chosen against the Third Reich and a sprawling espionage epic, Tarantino handles his story and actors adroitly while Verhoeven keeps his focus squarely on Carice van Houten getting her clothes off as often as possible. Which leads me into my last topic.
As a Verhoeven Film
On the whole, I like Paul Verhoeven’s work. More often than not, the success of his films are directly proportional to the amount of tongue he has in the subject matter’s cheek. Starship Troopers, for example, takes the piss out of militarism and the sort of ultra-nationalist sentiment towards loyalty that’d make either the Nazis or the Tea Party blush. Total Recall plays with the notion of identity and memory, keeping that element from Philip K. Dick’s work if nothing else. RoboCop easily pokes holes in privatization, our obsession with the media and the nature of corporate greed while delivering some pretty powerful storytelling. But Black Book plays everything straight. While I respect Verhoeven for not making light of the plight or challenges of the resistance in Holland in the twilight of the war, it’s also missing some of the elements that make quite a few of Verhoeven’s films such a delight to watch. Black Book is what happens when Verhoeven is, in essence, too serious. He has gone entirely the other way before, though, if Showgirls is anything to go by.
In the end, I did enjoy Black Book but everything it does has been done before and better elsewhere. It’s not bad, at all, but it’s definitely not the best.
This review marks the one year anniversary of ICFN’s podcast component, and to celebrate this, uh, monumental occasion, this review is being written and voiced by me, Danielle, aka that wife Josh always talks about. You’ll probably notice some stylistic differences between the two of us, too, so try not to get your panties in a twist when I’m not as polite as he is. Fair warning.
Anyway, I had originally wanted to do something old and loved that I haven’t seen before, so I could shit all over everyone’s nostalgia because, let’s face it, most cult classics are pretty terrible. However, we’d already watched Black Book before Josh thought to tell me this was the one year episode so here I am, reviewing yet another fucking World War II movie. Yay.
Now, I love World War II. I own a collection of books on the subject. Schindler’s List is the best movie that ever has been — and probably ever will be — made. Reich 5 is one of my favourite of the Infinite Worlds. So when even I am so fucking sick of this shit that we put off watching this movie for like a month and a half, you know it’s bad. Josh only picked this one up because MovieBob recommended it in some review or other, which made me even more skeptical, as he and I seem to either really agree or really disagree on most movies. But we’d put it off long enough and we needed to watch it for Netflix to send us anything else, so we finally bit the bullet and now, here we are.
The movie opens in ’50s Israel, where we meet two women – Ronnie Nolastnamegiven, a tourist, and Rachel Stein, a schoolteacher. They happened to be friends from Holland who haven’t seen each other since the war. After doing some catching up, Rachel, played by the very lovely Carice van Houten, goes off to contemplate how they met and how she ended up in Israel, and the movie starts for real this time. It’s nearly the end of the war, but that hardly makes things better for Rachel, who’s hiding place was just blown up and is now trying to flee the country. Needless to say, shit goes pear-shaped and after everyone she ever knew or loved is murdered by Nazis she joins the Resistance. If you’re starting to think she’d make a good JRPG protagonist, you’re not alone.
From there on out, it’s pretty much your standard World War II spy movie. Stein is a woman, so obviously she can’t fight, and instead seduces a Nazi officer, but of course she falls in love with him, and someone is selling their group out but they don’t know who, blah blah blah… There are more twists than you can count on one hand and only one is at all surprising, but even that takes forever to get to and forever to resolve. Having the movie go on for so long after the war ended was a mistake. At one point of hilarious self-awareness, van Houten sobs “Will it never stop?!” I was wondering that myself.
Given the pretty unoriginal premise, the film relies almost completely on the actors’ performances, which are admittedly great pretty much across the board. One scene with Theo, played by Johnny de Mol, was absolutely ridiculous and just made me laugh, but I don’t know if that was the actor or the retarded dialogue he was being made to spew forth. All of the characters except Stein, Müntze and Akkermans are pretty much impossible to feel any sort of empathy for because they’re vehicles for World War II drama archetypes, not actual people, and even those main three aren’t too interesting.
So, should you put Black Book on your Netflix queue? If you’re looking for a solid period drama, Schindler’s List is better. If you just want to see Nazis getting killed, you’ll be sorely disappointed, and should just queue up Inglorious Basterds and its loose interpretation of historical accuracy. If you want to see Carice van Houten whip her tits out with alarming frequency, you could do a lot worse than Black Book. But really, just do a Google search for screenshots. There are plenty, trust me. … Ahem.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
I am loathe to admit this, but I’ve made it a point in my writing and especially this series not to be disingenuous in my assertions. That’s a good way to get punched in the face. So here it is: I don’t like spook houses. Those standalone buildings in carnivals, fairs and amusement parts where part-timers are paid to jump out of closets at you? Yeah. Not really my scene. I don’t consider it horrific when I get startled. It’s just annoying. Around this time last year when Pandorum was out I didn’t really pay much attention to it, half-expecting it to be a jump-out scarefest dressed up as a high-concept sci-fi horror flick. This is one of those times when I’m pretty happy to admit I was wrong.
The Elysium is a spacecraft carrying thousands of colonists and biological samples for the settlement of the distant Earth-like planet of Tanis. Earth has just about run out of room and resources. While humanity suffocates on its own wastefulness and hubris, the Elysium‘s passengers are kept in deep cryogenic sleep for their 123-year journey with the promise that they’ll save anybody left behind. When Corporal Bowers wakes up for his shift, however, there are immediate problems. He’s been out long enough to lose parts of his memory. His ship is dying, its reactor core malfunctioning and its navigational systems unable to tell him where they are. His superior officer, Lieutenant Payton, has a similar memory problem when he wakes up. As Bower heads for the reactor to fix the ship and Peyton acts as mission control at the one working console, two things become apparent very quickly: The officers are not alone aboard the Elysium, and one or both of them are suffering from a mental condition similar to nitrogen narcosis related to extended cryogenic sleep – a condition they call Pandorum.
Do you have a feeling you know where this is going? If not, maybe you should consider watching more movies. Specifically, you need to check out Alien, The Descent and Event Horizon, because those are movies that at best inspired Pandorum and at worst were victims of a blatant idea mugging at its hands. Players of System Shock 2 or Dead Space will feel right at home as well. On the surface, there isn’t much about the concept, narrative through-line or inevitable “twist” moments that haven’t been seen, experienced or lampshaded before. But that’s a general overview and maybe a little unfair. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
It’s a shame more PhDs aren’t this badass. Or this hot.
It’s been said that as soon as you fill your spaceship with metal grating floors devoid of carpeting and lights that flicker on and off, your protagonists might as well use marinade for a shampoo. However, in the case of Pandorum, the set design is a big part of the atmosphere. This ship is old, with limited power and even more limited resources. Instead of dropping beefy space marines or even powered armor the protagonists have to learn to use into the situation, our heroes have little more than their clothes on their backs and whatever improvised weapons they can lay their hands on. I never said borrowing from Alien was a bad thing, after all. We’re pulled into the story and feeling the dread and claustrophobia of Bower long before we see our first creature.
Speaking of which, this was the second work of Stan Winston’s legendary creature shop after the mastermind’s untimely passing. The first was G.I. Joe – the less said about that the better. Anyway, I might have appreciated the psuedo-tribal designs and creepiness more if I’d gotten better looks at these things, however the camera moves so damn much whenever they’re around that it’s really difficult to do so. Giving fleeting glimpses of a monster instead of showing us what we’re in for is good as a rule. It’s why the original Predator works on a level that neither Aliens vs. Predator movie comes close to reaching. But the more Pandorum goes on, the more it feels the film crew shot it this way after getting drunk and deciding emulating Michael Bay’s camera work was a great idea for their fight scenes.
I don’t think Dennis wants to be reminded of G.I. Joe, either.
Another problem this movie has is in sound design. Now, the soundtrack of Pandorum isn’t all that bad, at least to my ears but then again I’m a sucker for tribal drums in my sci-fi, e.g. Bear McCreary’s kickass music for Battlestar Galactica. And the screams of the creatures are fine, creaking bulkheads, visceral tearing noises, etc. The problem I had was with the level of dialog. With so much else going on it’s really easy to lose lines or entire exchanges as they’re frantically whispered between the survivors. I understood that being quiet was necessary for survival in most of the open areas of the ship, but some scenes were very difficult for me to follow in terms of dialog. Then again, this might be the fault of watching this via the Netflix Instant service in a room right next to a busy intersection.
There are a lot of minor flaws in the overall movie that would cripple the entire project if there weren’t good things holding them up. Beyond the set design and lighting, we have a pace that gradually builds the tension and is in no rush to get to the bottom of the mysteries, opting instead to keep the action moving and build the characters. Par for the course considering this somewhat derivative material, the characters we get aren’t really all that deep or unique. However, what I like about them is that none of them are beefy macho space marines. The obligatory knife-twirling action babe began life as a geneticist and her stoic, large spear-wielding guardian was a farmer. These are normal people that managed to survive in extraordinary circumstances. The closest we come to military characters are Payton and Bower. And while Bower does some of the heavy lifting action-wise, he’s not exactly the Emperor’s Finest.
Bower and the film’s only ray gun.
This is a good thing, though. It’s one of the best things Pandorum has going for it. Ben Foster as Bower does just about everything right in ways that invoke pleasant memories of Bruce Willis playing John McClaine in Die Hard. He and the other survivors demonstrate good instincts and decent cognitive skills, for the most part. There’s only one point at which an audience might yell at the screen at a character for making a bad decision. I’ve always liked Ben Foster, from his funny and touching turn as Spacker Dave in The Punisher to his unhinged second gun to Russell Crowe in 3:10 To Yuma. Seeing him take the lead here is a very pleasant experience, and as much as Bower might be just an engineer and not cut out for combat or extreme survival, there is a scene in which my jaw was hanging open – not at the visuals, not at the viscera, but merely at the demonstration of an everyday guy having some big, brass balls.
It’s nowhere near a perfect movie. In terms of sci-fi horror, Alien has nothing to worry about. Pandorum is saved from failure by surprisingly decent writing and acting, excellent set design and a premise that assumes the audience is smart enough to follow along without needing things explicitly spelled out every step of the way. They just seem to forget that we’ve seen other movies before, meaning we’ve seen some of these elements before as well. If Pandorum were a baked concoction, you’d throw together equal parts Alien, The Descent and Titan AE, dash it with a little Dead Space and frost it with Event Horizon after it’s done baking. The result probably isn’t all that good for you and you’ll have tasted better, but that doesn’t stop this particular little experiment from tasting pretty damn good.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
If one were to look up ‘charming’ in the dictionary, the definition would read something like this:
1. pleasing; delightful. 2. using charm; exercising magic power.
Of course, that’s an English dictionary. If one were to look up ‘charming’ in a French dictionary, I imagine you would likely see a picture of Audrey Tautou in her title role of the comedic romance Amélie. And knowing her, the picture would wink at you.
The full title of the film, translated from French, is “The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain” and we catch up with her in Paris where she works as a waitress. Her life has been somewhat odd, to say the least, and sadness and tragedy are all around her. But Amélie is unwilling to let such little things ruin her sunny disposition. A chance discovery behind a loose tile in her bathroom launches her on a transformative journey that soon sees her affecting the lives of those she encounters for the singular purpose of bringing joy. She is just as comfortable and as happy being a matchmaker as she is a prank-playing vigilante. The one life Amélie seems incapable of repairing, however, is her own — it will take someone as singularly steeped in imagination and quirkiness as herself to draw her out of her Technicolor shell. The young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths, for example.
Technicolor is no exaggeration. The color palate of this film leaps directly off of the screen. Paris is portrayed with a great deal of splendor and whimsy, though director Jean-Pierre Jeunet got a little bit of stick for not including more minorities. This is a minor quibble, compared to the volume of praise he’s rightly earned for the vibrant colors that permeate this film. Clever editing has underscored the tint of Amélie’s world without making the people look discolored. Unlike other tricks used to supersaturate a movie, like those in Revenge of the Fallen for example, these Parisians don’t look at all like they have cheap spray-on tans.
I wish I had a better shot of this moment.
As pretty as the film might be, it absolutely would not work without the singular and unforgettable performance of Audrey Tautou. She inhabits the unique character Amélie with an innocent pixiness that makes her incredibly endearing. Many of the things she does are things that might not to occur to a “normal” person, but in her mind they make perfect sense and not once does Tautou convey any sort of confusion or even hesitation when it comes to her behavior. It’s a refreshing and unapologetic blast of optimism and goodwill in a cinema and culture dominated by “escapism” that tends more towards realism than surrealism. And isn’t escapism about escaping from the real world? Or at least, shouldn’t it be?
Amélie certainly thinks so, and challenges us to do the same thing as its blithely child-like protagonist. Not necessarily the introversion and pouring salt into people’s liquor, but finding joy in the little things during the course of our everyday lives. There’s no need for Amélie to boot up an expensive multi-player shoot-em-up experience or troll the Internet in search of the human contact she’s loathe to admit needing, when she gains just as much pleasure from skipping stones, sticking her hand in a sack of grain or wondering just how many people in her neighborhood are experiencing orgasms at a particular moment. As much as it’s necessary for her to occasionally emerge from the world she’s built herself inside her head, it’s still a world full of vibrant color and unabashed joy that has a universal appeal and, as much as some marketers would have you believe otherwise, is incapable of being captured in bottle, package or pill form.
Is this image showing Amélie, or us?
This movie’s title doesn’t mean it’s just about someone named Amélie. In a way, this movie is Amélie. It has a spring in its step, an overall lightness of tone undeterred by the harsh reality it runs into on occasion and an attitude that refuses to turn things down or conform to societal norms. It never crosses that line into ‘crass’ or ‘gross’ humor that seems required of so many American comedies. Oh, there are bits about sex aplenty in Amélie and it is definitely an adult comedy, but it’s every bit as smart as it is funny. And therein lies its greatest strength, in my opinion.
Rather than take your intelligence or imagination for granted, Amélie takes it by the hand and pulls it through the streets, breathlessly telling us everything we could be seeing if we just opened our eyes. There’s a sequence in the film itself that parallels this overall sentiment. We all have blind spots, where wonders and benefits and whimsy sit unnoticed, and the moments when those spots are illuminated need not be so rare. As much as the film wants to teach us this, it’s something Amélie herself needs to learn and so we’re learning right along with her. Despite the lightness of the movie’s tone, its meaning is pretty dense, in that there is a lot of it. With only a little smile and some whimsical music from an excellent soundtrack behind her, Amélie says a great deal more in a single moment than some other films can over the course of two hours.
“Obtenons dangereux!”
It’s not often that a movie takes on a life of its own in one’s headspace like this. Amélie isn’t trying to make you think in some socially conscious or disturbing way, however. It doesn’t come into your head bearing portents of doom or badly-written pamphlets full of shoddy logic. She brings mulled wine and her famous plum cake, just to make you smile. It’s a deeply personal and intimate movie that has the good sense never to take itself too seriously or dwell overmuch on its subject matter. Yet, at the same time, its whimsical lightness of tone completely belies the way it affects its viewer. For my part, at least, I found myself touched, encouraged, enchanted and delighted. The sort of feeling Amélie engenders is difficult to quantify and I for one wish I could bottle the feelings it’s given me. Not because I want to make a million dollars, though the money certainly wouldn’t hurt — I just want to feel this way more often. There’s too much darkness in the world, too much dour doom and gloom. If you’re as sick of it as I am, put Amélie on your Netflix queue. I guarantee that, among other things, you’ll never crack a fresh crème brûlée the same way again.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
Ever since I introduced the poll that lets fine people like you chime in on which movie gets ‘the treatment’ every week, one film has consistently and patiently waited its turn. I knew of its existence, heard it was extremely well-done and of interest for many reasons, including the fact it’s an adaptation of a novel. It finally won this past week, and I sat down to watch it last night with little to go on save knowledge of its long-form fiction origins, the sentiment that its plot is difficult to encapsulate (which it is, I only got my synopsis down after a half-dozen attempts), the touting of its female lead and the warning that this movie is long. At two and a half hours, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo certainly devours your evening, but considering that I was never bored, always intrigued and eager to find out what happened next, I’d call it an evening well-spent.
The story begins with the conviction of Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist accused of libel by a powerful industrialist. While Blomkvist suspects he was framed, he knows he can’t fight the industrialist’s legal team alone and resigns himself to spending some time in jail. Before his sentence begins, however, he is contacted by the reclusive patron of a powerful family living on an island off the coast. The old man’s neice, his favorite girl, has been missing for 40 years and he wants Blomkvist to find her. He finds himself drawn into a tangled web of tense relations and dark secrets, but he doesn’t start putting the pieces together until he gets a tip from a girl who’s been hacking his laptop – the girl with the dragon tattoo.
The novel upon which the film is based was originally titled Men Who Hate Women. It’s a dark story, superficially reminiscent of thrillers like Silence of the Lambs and Seven, or crime dramas like L.A. Confidential or Mulholland Drive. Moreover, the notion of a crime in a remote location with a limited number of suspects with intricate connections is evocative of even older dramas, those penned by Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Despite the prevelance of computer hacking and other modern trappings, there’s something seriously old-school about this yarn. Not many movies these days make a character going through old non-digital archives a gripping scene.
Not your typical heroes.
While we’re on the subject of characters, the emphasis on their reality and dimensionality is clear. The protagonists are never invincible and the antagonists are never cartoonish. Conclusions are reached and actions are taken for reasons that are not contrived or convenient. It keeps the story very grounded and surprisingly immersive. You lose yourself quickly in these peoples’ lives, especially when it comes to Blomkvist and Lisbeth. Blomkvist is a decent guy with a good head on his shoulders and a deep hunger for the truth that lies at the heart of any good and true journalist, but while he’s the gateway into the story, he’s definitely not its star.
The girl of the title, Lisbeth Salander, is a haunted, driven, asocial and violently independant young woman. Her actions, attitude and outlook are informed by a past that has lead her into being kicked around by the mental health and social authority systems. Being told who to be and how to act for years has left Lisbeth fiercely determined to make her own way. Actress Noomi Rapace never throttles back on Lisbeth’s intensity. Everything she does, every move she makes, has determination and purpose. Despite the tendency for the older gentlemen in thrillers and dramas to play chess with the lives of others, at this table, Lisbeth is Bobby Fischer and most other people aren’t sure of how the knight is supposed to move.
As much as I like Wonder Woman, Lisbeth’s a much more interesting “heroine.” (Anti-heroine?)
Something that struck me as odd is that this movie seems to be completely uninterested in the gravity of its own subject matter. It’s taking on things like misogyny, child abuse, indoctrination and rape but it never does so to the point of belaboring or dwelling overmuch on the matters. These things just happen, and the characters need to deal with them. It’s a slow burner, in that scenes take time to set up and pay off but never fall into the realm of uninteresting exposition. It’s detailed and meticulous, never taking our intelligence for granted. It might not have been necessary to go into as much depth as it does initially setting up the backgrounds and underlying motivations of the duo tackling this bizzare and ultimately disturbing case, but I feel this decision was rooted in the source material. I haven’t read any of Stieg Larsson’s work, but I get the impression the filmmakers were as faithful to the novel as possible. I really can’t fault them for that, but I’m also aware that not everything in a novel is necessary for a story on film to work.
The foundation of this film and its success, however, isn’t just the late novelist’s work, it’s the reality of its characters, settings and situations. From the way Blomkvist looks and behaves to the fact that Lisbeth uses a Mac with software we recognize instead of some sort of magic device as computers are often seen in American media, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo tells its story without hyperbole or hooplah. It’s not overtly romanticized or saddled with trying to fit into a particular genre for convenient marketing. It’s straightforward storytelling driven by characters that are well-rounded in their writing and excellently portrayed by their actors. Available via Netflix’s instant service, I’d recommend this for any fan of crime drama, good character development or foreign films. And you should definitely see this version if you’re a fan of the novels, because Hollywood has gotten their claws on it and are making their own version. I expect it’s going to have more beautiful people, more bombastic music and more telegraphed dialog in it, but I’ll try not to hate it on principle. Other Americans have the hate market cornered and I really don’t want to step on their toes. They have guns.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
