Cold War
For some reason, this movie reminded me of the prologue to
Up, in which the love story of a couple whips by, covering about 60 or 70 years of their lives in 5 minutes. In
Cold War, Pawlikowski whips us through 15 to 20 rocky years of a relationship as the setting shifts from post-war Poland to Berlin to Yugoslavia and to Paris while popular music trends shift from folk to bebop to free jazz to rock n roll, all in just a little over 80 minutes. Unlike the couple in the
Up prologue though, this couple is insane. This is the kind of obsessive and destructive love the term "amour fou" is meant to describe. The film is really beautiful to look at, and Joanna Kulig should have been nominated for an Oscar. You can see the toll of the relationship on her face as the years pass. I found a clip of a great scene from the movie, which I've spoilered under the trailer.
Hotel Mumbai
A docu-drama about the 2008 Mumbai attacks that is reminiscent of films like Greengrass'
United 93 and Villeneuve's
Polytechnique. And like those films, this is an edge-of-your-seat white knuckle experience, made all the more excruciating because it purports to depict real events. And like those films, there is a bifurcation in the storytelling -- the first part being more like a documentary, dispassionately observing the machinations of the terrorists and then the bewildered reactions from first responders and journalists on the ground during the attacks, and the second part being more like a conventional disaster genre flick, with movie stars playing characters with skeletal back stories (the former Russian intelligence officer, the exhausted bellhop, the wealthy American couple and their baby, etc.) scurrying around the besieged hotel trying to stay alive. It's that second part that is problematic as it smacks of exploitation but on the other hand, I doubt a movie that focuses only on the first part would ever get such a wide release. I'm not sure I enjoyed the film but like
United 93 and
Polytechnique, it's an unforgettable gut-punch of an experience.
The Mustang
The movie opens with onscreen text explaining the plight of wild mustangs in America and how there are prison programs that attempt to keep them alive by breaking and training them to be ultimately sold off at auctions. Once I saw this text, I predicted the entire story arc... and I turned out to be 100% right. So I don't know if I was in a weird frame of mind on this particular night but this movie still really hit me hard emotionally. In contrast, my wife was not taken in by the film's sentimentality and she is the one who loves animals. In hindsight, her reaction was probably the correct one. I'm a big fan of Matthias Schoenaerts (
Loft,
Rust & Bone,
A Bigger Splash) and always found him to be a very expressive actor so maybe that was part of my reaction to the film. And while I was watching the movie, I was reminded me of one of my favourite films from last year,
The Rider, which was also about a man and a horse and had the same unhurried, melancholy tone, so maybe that had something to do with it too. Maybe like Schoenaerts' character, I thought maybe I had developed a connection with the mustang but then I learned in the end credits that the mustang was played by three different horses.
Shazam
I thought using the plot from
Big in a superhero movie was fresh and entertaining at first but the movie ultimately suffers the same problem as with many superhero movies -- that dull final third of the movie when the final showdown occurs and there is nothing at stake amidst a mess of CGI effects. And is there a reason why the kid doesn't look anything like his adult/Shazam counterpart, or even have a similar personality? The movie clearly references
Big so they are supposed to the same person, right? I may have missed something. My wife thought those complaints were really nitpicky as she really loved the movie. Anyway, I was hoping the kid would bone an Elizabeth Perkins-like character -- while as Shazam of course. It would be interesting to see how modern audiences would react to that.
Under the Silver Lake
The premise of the movie was reminiscent of one of my favourite movies from last year,
Burning -- a 20-something slacker dude with no visible job or network of close friends meets a hot girl by chance and spends an incredible evening with her but then the woman disappears the next day, without a trace. Because this ostensibly unattainable woman represents a potential new life for the dude, the initial yearning for the missing dream girl turns into an obsession about finding her. Whereas
Burning uses that premise to lead into a paranoid thriller in which the audience is never sure if the dude is really seeing what he is seeing,
Under the Silver Lake goes into a shaggy dog mystery, in the same vein as
The Long Goodbye or
Inherent Vice, but much shaggier and nowhere near as funny. I guess there is some pleasure watching Garfield stumble towards the answer he is seeking despite his clear incompetence and low intelligence but it's been done better in those other movies, and also in
The Big Lebowski. I did rewind the movie a few times just to look back at some of the clues as this film is dense with call-backs so I was clearly engaged at some level. And I did enjoy the satirization of conspiracy theorists and the mythologized version of Los Angeles. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie turns into a cult classic in 10 or 20 years time. But for me, I found the movie more dull than not and its 140 minute running time exhausting and self-indulgent