Wednesday, January 27

Film Review: The Reader


Films about Nazis fascinate me, so any review I write about a film that touches on that period of German and world history is going to be slightly one sided. A better testament to this film (would be just about anything, but…) would be the amount of praise the lead has had heaped upon her for her performance, it is truly exceptional.


The Reader is a story of first love, and its simplicity, tainted by the realization that the woman who opened your eyes to love and was your first sexual experience was complicit in the murder of 300 Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz.

At moments this film is a comment on the guilt that I can only assume is carried by each successive German generation, a guilt that doesn’t have so much to do with the atrocities of the war itself but with the association to those who committed them. Sometimes those associations are strong, like that between a lovers or family; often it is that between kin and countryman.

It seems that no distance between is great enough when facing the terrible acts face on, even the usual distance between the viewer and the film doesn’t feel like enough when the holocaust is concerned. The Reader captures this feeling of inherited and communicable guilt and sometimes it can feel a little overwhelming.

Saturday, January 23

Film Review: Changeling


Hollywood has few happy stories to tell about L.A. It is presented as a city that has been distorted and twisted into something ugly by the convex glass of the lenses that forever studies it. The media attention that it’s police force, it’s industries and it’s residents are subjected to have, again and again, in films like L.A. Confidential, For Your Consideration and Who Framed Roger Rabit (OK, maybe not that one) shown L.A. to be an immoral Gomorrah-like nest of sin.

In film L.A. is a place where nothing is as it seems and a cover up is never far away. Changeling is about one such cover-up, in this case a mother loses her son and reports him missing, within a campaign of PR spin the L.A. police return a boy to her but it’s not her son. She then struggles to convince the police and the media that the wrong boy has been returned to her.

Angelina Jolie, who plays the mother, puts an amazing performance in and is believable throughout. Her performance does this true story real justice; it is almost wholly responsible for the viewer not abandoning all suspension of disbelief at all. Although the events are almost totally faithful to the truth, they seem so outrageous that they beggar belief. Keep in mind when your disbelief get the better of you though, that this is L.A. and the lens doesn’t distort that much.

Tuesday, January 19

Film Review: The Wrestler

RAHH!
Mickey Rourke, right? That’s his name isn’t it? I mean, apparently, back in the day this guy was a big deal and his comeback is the best since Jesus’ resurrection.
Well I will have to admit that if this guy was acting his heart out like this as a young man then he disappeared into a binge of self destruction and solipsism, then, this is the best comeback since… maybe not Jesus but certainly the Cadbury Caramel Bunny (fuck, she’s hot!).

The Wrestler is a character study of a likeable loser who has a chance to turn his life around or to resuscitate his career, and the two acts are mutually exclusive. The adulation he receives in the ring alleviates his boredom and reminds him of his glory days but every knock he takes him closer to a forced retirement that involves a catheter and wheelchair.

His Wrestler alter ego, the glory hound and the boy that has never grown up is at odds with the man he wants to become for his estranged daughter and the woman he loves. Ultimately, the two sides never reconcile and the man retreats to the ring where he has learnt to face the physical pain to escape the emotional pain he feels outside of it.

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