Pigeon Army
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Joined: 29/1/2006
From: Pixar HQ, George Lucas' Office.
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It's been a good week.
08. Les triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville) (2003, Chomet, FRN/BEL/CAN/UK) - 4.5/5
Chomet's feature film debut is very, very easy to like. His animation style is at once charming and grotesque and always a wonder to behold, what with its overtly-exaggerated proportions and fluid, inhuman movements (and his emulation of early Disney-era animation in the opening sequence is quite a wonderful - and surprisingly violent - sight). It's also clear that he shares fellow Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet's love of well-honed setpieces, something particularly evident in the musical segments - the 'Triplets of Belleville' reprise is an exquisite piece of diegetic music I could listen to forever, and the piece played in the Belleville restaurant is fantastically put-together. He also shares Jeunet's love of kooky underdog protagonists, and Madame Souza and Bruno are perfectly realised variations on this theme - with her uneven legs, big eyes and penchant for whistling, Souza is as sweet and endearing a character as any I've seen, and you're on her side pretty much immediately and you never leave it throughout. The other characters are also pretty awesome - the Belleville triplets are hilarious in their grotesque physical comedy and musical skills and the mob boss and his cube-shouldered security guards are incredible highlights. Generally, The Triplets of Belleville is an incredibly enchanting and imaginative animation that really pulls out all the stops to deliver a beautiful and entertaining experience.
14. The Interview (1998, Monahan, AUS) - 4.5/5*
After being arrested for an unspecified crime, unemployed man Eddie Rodney Fleming engages in a battle of wits in the police interview room with the canny Det. Sgt. John Steele. The Interview sounds like it's cribbed from Kafka, but Monahan's fantastic psychological thriller is so much more than a retread of The Trial. It's an incredibly tight piece that plays with audience perception and constantly challenges your interpretation of events, the power constantly shifting between the characters, each one holding their own agenda close to their chest. Hugo Weaving gives a career-defining performance as the initially-pathetic man hauled in for a crime he's unaware of, and Tony Martin is every bit his equal as the slimy, determined Det. Sgt. Steele, a man with a tenuous hold on ethics but an unwavering grasp on right and wrong. It's also excellently shot, with an ever-threatening location (a cathedral converted into a police station) providing us with a pitch-perfect atmosphere.
18. The Piano (1993, Campion, NZ/AUS/FRN) - 4.5/5
Review coming soon to my NZ Film thread. Hopefully will have it written up tomorrow.
44. Toy Story (1995, Lasseter, USA) - 4.5/5****
I keep flip-flopping with this film. Watching it on TV last weekend while touching up an essay on Kim Ki-Duk, I was surprised by just how much I was drawn back into it. It's hilarious, brilliantly-animated (Sid's house is perfect in the way it is so normal and yet so bloody perturbing) and just generally an excellently-made film that makes you empathise with toys, allowing you to both capture the wonder of your childhood in a bottle and appreciate everything you wouldn't as a kid. It understands perfectly the world kids create for their toys and allows us to tap into it and enjoy it vicariously, and it's a hell of a lot of fun as a result. If anything, I think the one thing that dragged it down last viewing was the 3D. Maybe. I'm unsure.
79. Ten (2002, Kiarostami, FRN/IRN/USA) - 4/5
My first Kiarostami is his film documenting ten conversations between a divorced-and-remarried woman driving a cab in Iran, and it's a thought-provoking and rather intelligent work that looks at the place of women and men in Iran with an unflinching, and often humourous, eye. Women come and go from the cab and discuss religion, marriage, sex and men with our driver (played with some skill by Mania Akbari), and these conversations, repetitive and oddly revealing as they are - seriously, the passengers essentially use the driver as a free psychiatrist, which is odd given how passive-aggressively judgmental she can be - feel like real attempts by the characters at rationalising a society where women are placed in a subordinate position by virtue of not having a penis. They talk at length justifying their decisions or balancing their ideals out with their lives, and it's oddly fascinating viewing - the camera does make it uncomfortably voyeuristic at points (the ultra-religious woman especially), but it's provocative and engaging all the same. The film's highs and lows both arrive in the driver's conversations with Amin, her on-screen son (played by Amin Maher), an aggressive kid acting out against his mother. While Amin is oddly eloquent for a kid his age, to the point it takes one out of the film, and the scenes between Amin and the driver are often incredibly uncomfortable to watch as he screams about how she's a terrible mother and she pulls an infuriating passive-aggressive act that neither addresses his concerns nor shuts him up (a routine much like that which my mother used to pull on me  ), it's nonetheless riveting to watch as they talk at each other, neither really grasping just what exactly is causing the friction in the eyes of each party - Amin sees himself as being used as a pawn in his parents' post-divorce existence and doesn't understand why his mother simply won't let him be with the parent he likes most; the driver can't fathom why Amin would choose his good-for-nothing father over her and doesn't understand why he can't see the sacrifices she makes for him. At the end of the day, it's these scenes that make the film's universality so poignant - the repressive nature of Iranian society amplifies these themes, but the place of women in that society gains relevance to the rest of the world through these exchanges, devoid of geopolitical undertones.
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ORIGINAL: Rinc
She's supposed to be 13! I'd want her to be very attractive though
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ORIGINAL: MonsterCat
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ORIGINAL: Pigeon Army
Stop being mean to Deviation
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