Fish Tank (2009)

Mia is reckless. She picks fights with girls without justification. When she sees a nice horse, she tries to steal it. Her life has no direction. Is it nature or nuture? Her mother, who is perhaps more reckless and less sympathetic, says “it’s like she came out looking for trouble.”

That’s just the thing Mia’s mother (Kierston Wareing) would say. She’s an abusive single parent (living in a housing complex) who likes to party and rarely has an intelligent thought. She begins seeing a security guard at a home improvement store, Connor, but there are no scenes between them that say they’ll last. There is no connection.

Meanwhile, Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis), a teen, has taken up hip-hop dance, after seeing a skank she hates do it poorly. The first scene in which she dances doesn’t really flatter her limited skills. But she tries again, in front of the TV (tuned to a Ja Rule music video) one morning, in her pajamas. That’s when she meets her mother’s boyfriend.

Her mother acts differently around Connor (Michael Fassbender) than she does around her daughters, Mia and Tyler (Jarvis and Rebecca Griffiths, respectively); she’s much less abusive.

During one of her mother’s parties, and while her nine-year-old sister was upstairs drinking and smoking with a friend, Mia gets overly intoxicated and passes out in her mother’s room. (Her mother only cares because she’s in her room.) It’s Connor who picks her up, takes her to her room, and covers her with a blanket. It’s a simple act of kindness, but it might have been the first kind thing anyone has done for Mia in a long time.

One day, Connor takes Mia and Tyler along with their mother on one of their long drives (to the dismay of Mia’s mother). They drive to a pond, where Connor takes his shoes off and announces he’ll be entering the water to catch a fish. Mia’s mother and sister ridicule him, but Mia joins him. And while Mia and Connor try (and succeed) to catch a fish, Mia’s mother and sister continue to call them names. Their comments do nothing but try to put them down. Connor occasionally teases Mia over the course of the film, but his comments are never meant to hurt her.

There is a clear lack of ambition among the residents of the complex, including the three women at the heart of the story. Connor even asks the girls what animal they would want to come back as in a future life. Each of them chooses an animal that stays on the ground, while he says he would want to be a bald eagle. “Wouldn’t you want to fly?” he asks.

[Spoilers begin here.]

But Mia can change. We see that she’s an observer. The scene with the dancing skank, spying on her mother and Connor, the horse (whose owner she develops a relationship with), Connor’s yard and house… director Andrea Arnold makes it clear that she’s not just a poor, dumb girl who wasn’t taught any better.

It becomes apparent, at one point, after Connor does many kind things in a row for her, that she’s falling for him. And him for her. Even though they’re both immature in their own ways, they have some brains. Arnold shows us Mia dancing once again, this time in front of Connor and with his favorite song (which is turning into her favorite song). Arnold likes to put her characters in dimly lit places, and perhaps it was just the late evening lighting, but Mia actually looked like a good dancer. She looked like she was in a stylish music video, living the dream.

Mia, a 15-year-old, and Connor, a 30-year-old, become intimate.

The next day, Connor is gone. Mia’s mother is bawling, and Mia tries to find him.

She traces him to a suburban home a few miles from her town. And once Mia realizes that Connor has a wife/live-in girlfriend and a child, she turns into an animal… peeing on what she perceives as her property, taking her jealousy and frustration out on his little girl, who she kidnaps. The child even says “you’re starting to scare me now.” This innocent little girl is threatening this thing she likes, and what is her plan?

What is ever her plan? She tries to steal the pretty white horse twice, and fails both times. But what if she succeeded? What would she do with it?

After a water scene that contrasts beautifully with the scene back at the pond, Mia comes to her senses. It’s both devastating and reassuring. Finally, she’s doing a somewhat mature thing. There are no grand speeches, no lightbulbs. She gives the child back, and moves on.

The next day, she has an audition as an erotic dancer. Only she doesn’t know about the erotic part until she sees the girl before her. The tape on Mia’s audition is Connor’s favorite song, and half in retaliation toward him, and half because she doesn’t want to be an erotic dancer, she storms out. Two mature things in a row. The film could have ended right there.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. A few more things happen, none of them effective or satisfying. Part of this is because we never got a good sense of the person who “rescues” her from the housing complex, the owner of the horse she tried to steal. The film patches up what had cracked, for no apparent reason but to have a happy ending.

3.5/4

Notes:

• I wondered if Mia’s mother still talks to her parents.
• Tyler acts differently around Connor, as well. Her foul mouth cleans up a bit.
• How quickly Mia goes from the hunter (of “Kira”) to the hunted (by Connor), and from unhappy to happy to unhappy, again. At one point, Tyler gives the opinion that anything that can fly can be shot down easily.
• Next week: Mid-August Lunch and The Diary of Anne Frank.

CNBC Originals: As Seen on TV/Objectified (2009)

As Seen on TV

Inside-the-industry cable documentaries fascinate me. Their running times allow them to be intense and immerse-able without being heavy at all. (Side note: ‘immersive’ really should be a word.) Plus, we get the equal parts goofy and serious narrator. Factual television is as full of potential as reality television is popular.

This is why I wanted to include one of these CNBC Originals in our festival.

I once wasted a good deal of money on a ShamWow, so I know this first hand, but advertising really works. Particularly infomercials. Apparently, and according to As Seen on TV, it’s a $150 billion industry. PedEggs outsell Snickers. Those hammy, ridiculous sales pitches actually work on people, and it’s no wonder. Who doesn’t need a saw that refuses to cut human flesh (maybe)?

But wait, there’s more! They actually made and sold a Chia Obama!

The infomercials are cheesy, and As Seen on TV stoops to that level of cheesiness to get its point across… or maybe just to be a little more entertaining. It, like the commercials it highlights, is filled with fluff and things I neither ever wondered about nor will actually remember.

Of course, it wasn’t as good as the ones about airplane crashes, but As Seen on TV was a fun and forgettable cable documentary and was totally worth the 41-minute investment.

My rating: **½

Objectified

Unless… you happen to have 75 minutes free. In which case, you should see Objectified.

The documentary about objects in our world is made by Gary Hustwit, the same person who directed Helvetica, the documentary about font. I thought Helvetica had a lot of promise that wasn’t capitalized on. It drags and is weak at times.

But Objectified is the complete opposite (despite being similar to its cousin in that it relies entirely on expert talking-heads instead of finding everyday people to talk to). It’s zippy and fun, but can handle some emotion and provokes deeper thought. (Yes, kids, even about art!) I enjoyed the final few shots, particularly.

My rating: ***½

Next time: a few mini-reviews of 2009 films I’ve already seen.

Another Earth (2011) and Rabbit Hole (2010)

Today, we start a new chapter. New design, new content, new focus. I’ll explain it all later, but I thought I’d start this new era by reviewing one of my favorite films of all time.

Sometimes, I’ll be watching a film when I realize that I’ve been drawing comparisons to other films the entire time. This shouldn’t come as a shock to me; I know who I am and what my world/mind is made of. But, somehow, it always does. I love it when this happens, because I can spend days on comparisons like this. While I was watching Another Earth, I drew two comparisons, and I will explore one of them here.

The first was to Gattaca. Like Another Earth, it is a sci-fi film that has an extremely complex male-female relationship at its core. In Another Earth, a promising young astronomer-to-be named Rhoda (played brilliantly by Britta’s quasi-lesbian lover from Community, Brit Marling) drinks and drives after a party. She must deal with the consequences of this action (unlike Chelsea) when she kills the wife and kid of a composer named John (portrayed well by William Mapother). Gattaca’s plot is not even similar to Another Earth‘s until the end, despite various agreements in mood. I don’t want to spoil either film, but instead point out what an interesting pairing they make for because of this. In fact, if I had to see Another Earth back-to-back with another film, I would choose Gattaca immediately after…

Rabbit Hole. Rabbit Hole was a film I respected and really liked after my first viewing. Back in November, I had a chance to see it again, and this time, things were different. So many of the small, beautiful details had completely slipped my mind. After taking notes, I think I could go on at length about these details, and someday I hope I get the opportunity to. But a major part of Rabbit Hole was the rabbit hole theory; the idea that somewhere out there, in another dimension perhaps, you are happy… even if you aren’t happy right now. Those of you who have seen Another Earth are, for sure, nodding your heads, as you can see how it relates.

Nicole Kidman plays Becca, a woman whose son was run over by a car more than half a year before the film starts. She takes comfort in the idea of an alternate version of her, but that thought was not her own. It was brought to her attention by Jason (the young, talented Miles Teller), the boy whose car slain the child who wandered into the street. Going back the Another Earth, Rhoda and John both look for peace on Earth II, a near-replica of Earth I which finds itself within shuttle distance of their home planet.

Automobiles play subtle roles in both films, since both of their plots stem from car accidents. It’s incredible, now that I think about it, how similar the films are in terms of plot. Maybe I’m a sucker for this type of movie, but I doubt that’s the only reason I fell for both of these pictures.

Another Earth is, at its most basic level, a collection of images that Rhoda seals in her memory forever. Given complexity, it is a living and breathing museum through the life of a person who has no life. Rhoda herself is curating, and once the seal on this memory container is broken, there’s no going back. I wasn’t attracted to this story at first, but Brit Marling really drew me in with her stellar, nuanced performance as this troubled young adult. Additionally, the relationship between Rhoda and John is one of the most natural onscreen relationships in recent memory. Not a single moment in forced.

The voiceovers are the most annoying part of the film, but I only counted four of them, so they don’t breathe down your neck too often. In the early bits, you may feel it gets too art-house and too indie, but it redeems/earns these poetic pauses.

The performances of Kidman, Teller, Aaron Eckhart (Becca’s husband), and Dianne Weist (Becca’s mother) all bring emotional realism to Rabbit Hole, as well. Kidman’s performance, in particular, conveys a mixture of guilt, anger, and superiority that she doesn’t have to tell you about in order for you to understand. Each of her interactions with the other characters brings a new meaning to what we already know about her. It’s a brilliantly structured film, but how much would that matter if the players weren’t so perfectly in-tune with each other.

I’m scared I’ll write another seven paragraphs about Rabbit Hole here! Again, I appreciated the little things. I particularly enjoyed how all the characters called their support group simply “group,” allowing it to rule over them. The different, cold-light-of-day look of the kitchen at the end was a simple but effective touch. But the one thing, above all else, that makes Rabbit Hole work so well is its willingness to throw blame out the window. This isn’t a story about right and wrong. It’s the story of a family and what has to be done to maneuver life.

Additional notes, but no funny quotes:

• Another Earth: ***½
• The narration at the beginning of Another Earth reminded me of Beginners.
• 1 hour and 10 minutes in: John’s smile is heartbreaking.
• When Another Earth flashes back to the accident at that crucial time, it is simply brilliant.
• I tried to explain the film to a friend, and I used the term “our Earth” while talking about Earth I, but do we really know that’s our Earth?
• Another Earth has currently bumped Certified Copy from my list of best films of the year.
• Rabbit Hole: ****
• This Debbie character means a lot in the film, but we never see her. It was a nice touch.
• This is the movie A Little Help wishes it were.

Lymelife (2008)

**½

Lymelife is a movie about deer killing, pool tables, and very, very awkward love-making scenes.

Alec Baldwin plays Mickey, a father of two living in rural New York. Mickey is a man who probably never says sorry, even when he means it. Scott, his youngest son, is having bully and girl troubles. Jimmy, his grown-up son who is apparently in the Army, has come home for awhile, and I don’t really know why his character is in this movie. Charlie Bragg, the Bartletts’ neighbor, has recently contracted lyme disease, and is distant because of it. His wife, losing interest, sleeps with Mickey. Everything starts going wrong when everyone finds out.

Lymelife would have benefited from a bit more backstory to its characters. Show, don’t tell. This movie doesn’t show, it just tells. It tries to show suburban life, but this isn’t suburbia (despite what “Jimmy” tells us). Why are these characters doing the things they’re doing? Only so much can be blamed on acting. And it tries to be funny, but the humor is usually too dark, too hit-or-miss, or too steeped in sad dramatic irony for it to work.

Timothy Hutton’s speech in the 51st minute was one of the most powerful of the film, but I was drawn out because of the poor delivery and performance. These words (are supposed to) mean more to this man than Scott can imagine, yet he’s just blurting them out without any emotion. He has another supposed-to-be-strong scene later in the film, with Alec Baldwin. It’s better, but it still falls a bit flat, and I think I have to blame that on Baldwin, one of my favorites.

I never really bought Adrianna or the storyline between her and Scott. I understand why it has to be in the movie, but better acting and better writing in one or two scenes alone would have made this film substantially better. The scene in which the bully gets beat up, though, is shot beautifully. We only see what’s happening through the reflection on the car window. The 1970s atmosphere is very believable. The vomit scene interestingly shot, with no words… only emotion (finally).

The movie picks up (albeit rather late) when Baldwin’s character is kicked out of his own house because his wife, portrayed by a very good Jill Hennessy, can’t stand his cheating anymore. Scott and his father reunite one night, though, smoking together. That’s one of the scenes that is heartfelt and works. It gains momentum from there, benefiting from being about just the three central Bartletts. They actually feel like a real, struggling family at this point. I found interesting that on his confirmation day, Scott is forced to wear a robe that has his father’s name on it.

Lymelife is interesting… mostly during the last half hour, though. If you want to see a better version of this movie, please check out The Squid and the Whale.

Notes:

• Why do their kids look like that? Why did they cast the Culkin brothers? Rory can’t seem to act during the first half of the movie.
• Scott and Ralphie from A Christmas Story fight very similarly.
• “Nice shirt there, big guy.”
• “I’m not like Radar, okay! I just do what he does on the show!”
• “The inside of a jelly donut.”

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

****

The Thin Blue Line begins with a cop stepping out of his car. As more people and points of view are added to this action, the story gets longer.

The characters in Errol Morris documentaries are always vivid. In fact, they’re more vivid (and therefore more unbelievable) than the wildest characters in the wildest soap opera dramas. And some of them are just as unintentionally funny as those ridiculous characters too.

The smug smile on the blonde, red-faced woman. The “choc. liquid” found on the side of the road. The subtle sexism at the Dallas Police Department. These are small, humorous, and perfect details that don’t need to be in this movie. But they are, and they make it great. Attention to detail this acute is not often found in cinema.

The 1988 documentary follows the events of a fall night in Dallas, Texas, when a police officer was shot while on duty, and the consequences stemming from it.

One of the brilliant strokes of this film is the ending. The final interview, which was taped, shows no faces. All the emotion comes from the tone of David Harris’ voice. Sometimes, fact is more compelling than fiction. That is certainly the truth here.