I was part of a conversation about Interstella 5555 on the Cinematary podcast, which you can listen to here if you're interested! Otherwise, onward to the reviews!
Movies
No surprise that this movie lacks the elegance of the novel it's based on, given the reliance of Laurie Halse Anderson's prose and symbolism on the kind of interior monologue that's hard to replicate in film. The pacing of this movie is all out-of-wack, too, in the way that a lot of novel adaptations tend to be, where they include scenes because they occurred in the book rather than because the scenes actually make a productive part of the film. As a whole, there's the sense that a more judicious editor at both the screenwriting and post-production stage could have formed a much tighter, better movie overall. But it's probably more productive to talk about what this movie does well, since it's not inconsiderable. Of course Kristen Stewart is very good, but I think we've all come around to expect that now. More surprising to me is Steve Zahn as the extremely enthusiastic but also very awkward art teacher, who is pitch perfect at the kind of foolish-but-nurturing energy possessed by dorky teachers who love their subject and consider themselves above the procedure of public education. Honestly, the cast is basically top-to-bottom great (though I'm not 100% sure that they're all aware that they're in the same movie—some are pretty naturalistic, while others seem like they're going for a much more cartoony vibe). The locations are also incredible; this movie is one of the very, very, very few pieces of mainstream high-school-centric American media I've seen that depicts a high school environment that actually looks like a typical public high school—it's like this movie, Freaks and Geeks, and... that's it? This movie just nails that disinfected-but-somehow-still-dingy, fluorescent, echo-y aesthetic that's instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever stepped foot in a high school that's neither a private school nor located in Southern California, and it nails it with such fidelity that it's honestly the thing that most impressed me about this movie. Can more high school movies take place in real high schools, please? Grade: B
Daft Punk's Discovery is, of course, an unassailable good time, so even if this had just been an iTunes visualizer for 65 minutes as the album played, this movie would have still been enjoyable. But what we have is an anime that's an allegory for the joy of music and the exploitative practices of the music industry, which is even more enjoyable. The story itself gets a little draggy at times, especially toward the end, but the music always carries the movie forward, even then. We need more feature-length animated visual albums. Grade: B+
Begins as a thinking man's dumb movie, a pretty silly but sincere and interesting rumination on loss. Ends as a dumb man's dumb movie, a loud meathead story about how the hero has to genocide a species of sub-humans in order to save his sexy replacement girlfriend. I kind of wish this would just find a mode and stick to it. It's kind of fun, but in what way? Am I supposed to be sincerely or ironically enjoying this movie?? Anyway, this was directed by H. G. Wells's great-grandson, and I gotta say, he should maybe be taking notes from his great-grandfather, certainly no stranger to weird tonal shifts but also capable of making them interesting regardless. Grade: C
Robert Bresson is a filmmaker whose work I always feel like I'm unproductively bouncing off of as I'm watching the movies but whose nuances subsequently open up to me in the days following my watch. With L'Argent, I'm still kind of in the bouncing off stage; I'm writing this just a few hours after seeing the movie, and I'm struggling to figure out exactly how this movie is saying anything more than a variation of Pink Floyd's "Money"—i.e. currency is a social (almost religious) construct but it nonetheless dominates our lives as much as anything more tangible. I'm sure it's more nuanced than that, so hopefully I'll get there. But that said, this is astonishingly precise filmmaking, even if all it's saying is "Money! It's a gas!" I know that people sometimes find the mid-century European art-film tradition to be stultifying, but movies like this, where every camera movement, piece of lighting, every edit feels like a meticulously controlled, planned piece of the broader project of the film, are great examples why I will always find this kind of style more engaging than the looser, more naturalistic techniques that have become more popular in the 21st century. I know the "one perfect shot" thing has basically become self-parody, but golly, this movie is nothing but perfect shots, and even if I never find more depth to it than I've already articulated, it's still a pleasure being led to those ideas so confidently and beautifully. Grade: B+
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