98. TOKYO STORY

GENERATIONAL GAP

By Darin Skaggs

SPOILERS!

     They say you never know what you got until it’s gone.  You can never really appreciate something and especially someone until they are no longer in your life.  Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story takes that idea and runs with that feeling through a two and half hour film. 

     The film is about an older couple that are going to visit there adult children.  At the beginning they are excited to see their children, which make you feel happy for them.  The kids on the other hand do not seem too excited, they are busy with work and their own children to even plan well for their parents trip.  The parents arrive and try to have a good time, but they are left at home to wait and sometimes just go out on their own.  A week passes and it is time for them to go back.  They are unsatisfied with the trip.  The mother starts to mention that she does not feel well.  Then sometime on their way back the mother dies.  The rest of the film is spent trying to get over the guilt of not appreciating their mom.

     The film is genius by just setting up the relationship of the parents and their children.  There is no build up to the mother’s death.  The first half of the film is interactions between the family.  When the scene is a parent with one or more of the children, they are trying to have a good time, but when it is just the children interacting they complain about the parents.  This is strange and awkward to watch, this family is not really falling apart but just going through the motions.  Though without these scenes, the film does not get its payoff with the finale. 

     By the time the parents leave the older children are relieved, the youngest is left empty handed and the parents hold nothing but disappointment.  Then just like life the unexpected happens.  Their mother is gone.  She has passed away, you feel the sadness and the fact they know they could never talk to their mom again and say sorry for treating her poorly or say how much she meant to them.  These characters are the same from before; the only thing that has changed is that they are filled with more regret.

     One of the most effective and moving scenes comes near the end with the father.  He has returned home after the funeral.  The entire movie he has never shown emotion and not let people know that something has bothered him, even to his wife to some extent.  Until the last scene where a neighbor comes and sees how he is holding up after his wife’s funeral.  He says he’ll be fine and that it will be lonelier, but saying it with his regular expression.  Then the neighbor bids him farewell and walks off.  The father then, for the first time as long as we have known him, looks down and gives the slightest frown.  This conversation and small facial movement is so telling of what this man has gone through and how much of his emotion he has been hiding for his family.

     This film is all about family; what makes them good and what can make them bad.  It is a film that makes you pick up the phone seconds after it finishes and call your mom or someone in your family.  It’s one of the most heartbreaking tales in the history of cinema.  It will keep you thinking long after the film ends.

99. CLOSE-UP

FAR FROM CLOSE

By Darin Skaggs

     In my early years of being a film fanatic I watched the “classics.” Most of these, while still being great had mostly the same structure.  First the set up, then a conflict to solve, there is a romance going on the whole time and then the plot is resolved.  Now seeing most of the classics I now search for more non-structure work.  Abbas Kiaramstami’s Close-Up is one of the most interesting and unique films I’ve seen my whole life.

     Close-Up is based on a true story about a man who poses as a famous director in Iran.  He ends up at this families home, they welcome him in, they give him shelter and they feed him.  Eventually the family finds out who he really is and the man is put to trial for identity fraud.  The catch for this movie is that instead of the director hiring actors to play these roles he hires the actual people involved to play themselves.  Not only that but the director goes in and films the real trial.

     While basically being reenactments of a strange story it also works on many emotional levels.  By using the real people you can get the real reactions and how they really felt during the time of the incident.  It is a film about trying to accept who you are.  This man who pretends to be a famous director seems sad.  The film says that there are consequences to not being yourself and that it is a lot harder to live the life of someone you’re not then be who you are.  This film is one of the weirdest and beautiful films I’ve ever seen.

100. DON'T LOOK NOW

Do Watch Now

By Darin Skaggs

SPOILERS!

     One of the most look down upon genres in film is the horror genre.  In most recent years the genre has become blood filled and unnecessary franchises, much like the 1980’s and early 90’s.  The first kind of horror films were from the 1930’s that included Frankenstein and Dracula.  Most of these films are fun and interesting, but for the most part not scary.  The first terrifying horror film, in my opinion, is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. This film started the short lived horror masterpieces that lasted from 1960 starting with Psycho and ending with Ridley Scott’s Alien with some good ones here and there.  Right in the middle of this spectacular span of horror movies is Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. 

     The film opens with a young girl in a red raincoat walking near a small body of water.  At the same time this scene cuts to the girl’s family in their home, the dad working on schematics for a church he is scheduled to redo.  There is some weird imagery throughout the scene and then something happens.  The dad spills some red paint on the picture of the church and has vision of bad things happening to his daughter outside.  He runs out and sees his daughter in the water, she has drowned.  His wife looks and seems in shock with the dad holding his dead child and screaming in emotional pain.  Then cut to months later.

     The opening to this film is the driving force of emotion for what goes on for the rest of the film.  Though I called this film a horror film, which I do think it is, it is also a psychosocial thriller.  The entire time after the death of his young daughter he is slowly ridden with guilt.  The cut right after the death scene is not only months after it is also on the other side of the country.  The church he is working on is in Venice.  While there his wife meets these two women that seem to have a lot of interest in her and the dad.  They are weird and they try to convince both of them that the dad has supernatural powers and might be able to see the future.  We and the father character struggle if this is true or part of him losing his mind.  This film has many metaphors for the grief stricken state of the father.  He does the best he can to take his mind off his daughter’s passing.  He becomes romantic with his wife, that doesn’t work.  He works hard re-building the church he’s been assigned, that makes him worse due to the fact every time he is there his life is threated.  He tries multiple things to distract himself yet it all comes back, in a very subtle way, that his daughter is gone.

     The horror part of the film is that there is a small figure the father keeps seeing running around Venice.  This figure is dressed in a red raincoat that is identical to the one of his daughter.  Only he sees this figure.  It is a metaphor for his guilt and grief and might also be really happening to him.

     When watching this film I found that the dad was really broken up about the loss of his daughter, it is tearing him apart and slowly leading him into a deep depression.  He is broken, but his wife either has not been affected at all or not too much.  In the opening scene he is so affected that his daughter is gone, but the mother is only slightly fazed when she realizes her daughter has drowned.   This leads to the complete paranoia that someone is trying to murder him.  At one point his wife leaves to go back to the United States, yet he sees her on a passing boat.  He calls the states and finds out that she is there and had not yet return.

     The ending of the film is one of my favorites.  In the climax the father is chasing the figure in the raincoat.  When he finally catches up to the raincoat it is in the church.  The figure turns around and is a creepy old lady.  The man is in shock.  Then the old woman takes out a knife and kills the dad.  While dying the man sees everything that happens, including the beginning when he spills the red on the church symbolizing his death.  The whole film it a metaphor about how losing someone can slowly kill you emotionally.  He slowly loses the passion for his wife and seems to fully forget his son.  The vision he has for the future, including his funeral, is a metaphor for his depression making him feel what he feels the future will be without his child.

     This film is a classic.  It is filled with metaphors for death, grief and depression.  The film deals with them head on in a dark way.  It is also a great mystery, psychological thriller and horror film that keeps you entertained and will stick with you for a long time.

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     For many people there is a certain film that they saw at a young age that gives them great nostalgia when they watch it.  For me one of my favorites is the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.  I have fond memories of watching this film over and over as a child.  This series has become one of many to be “re-imagined” and made into a new series of films.  Some of those previous being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, both directed by Tim Burton and movies that I am not very fond of.  This time around Sam Raimi, the director of The Evil Dead series and the Spider-Man trilogy, takes the reigns of Oz the Great and Powerful.

     Raimi’s film is a “prequel” to the original Oz movie.  The film just like the original starts off as black and white.  It is a nice set up to the story and a nice nod to the classic film.  There are many moments in the film that pay homage to The Wizard of Oz.  Sometimes this can be a problem.  The film cannot decide its tone, it cannot decide whether it is a film that is merely an expansion on the Oz universe or if it can be a story on its own.  Some of these are charming, but there are just too many of them that they distract from the film having a fully formed narrative.

     The performances of the film are about half and half, some good and some bad.   The lead James Franco, who I like in most of his work, gives a crazy performance that almost redeems itself and makes sense near the climax of the film, but is mostly awkward and hard to watch.  The good performances of the movie are given by two of the witches played by Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz.  The third witch played by Mila Kunis, who is maybe more crazy and worse than Franco which is a shame because she plays the great villain The Wicked Witch of the West.  The best acting in the film is by CGI characters, a monkey in a bell hop suit who is voiced by Zach Braff and a small girl made of China.

     A big part of the film is the visual effects.  Sometimes they are nice to look at, but for most of the film it was a real distraction.  There were moments of the film where you could say “Oh look! They’re in front of a green screen.”  Things did not look bad, but they just did not look real enough to for me to be captivated.

     This film is unoriginal, but still is better than other stuff being put out. The acting seems like there were some people only doing this for a paycheck and the special effects people are trying too hard to impress us.  The movie will not make my best of the year nor my worst.

ZERO DARK THIRTY Review

ZERO DARK THIRTY Review

By Darin Skaggs

     “This film is based on true events.”  Many films have this claim on the front of their movie and there are many different ways that they are told.  Movies like Apollo 13 are told through many different characters.  Others are inspirational like Rudy or Remember the Titans.  Some focus on one character like The Pianist or Kathrin Bigalow’s new film Zero Dark Thirty.

     The film opens with a black screen then followed with a collection of voices.  It is soon revealed that these phone calls and reporters are all from September 11^th, 2001.  Then it jumps to two years later.  The films focus is on Jessica Chastain’s character among others trying to find any leads on finding Osama Bin Laden.  If you have had any intake of any type of news for the past few years you know the conclusion to this film but it is still one of the most impactful and entrancing films of the year.

     A film released previously this year that was also based on a true story is Ben Affleck’s Argo.  This film was very good, but at times felt too Hollywood by adding jokes and just-in-time moments.  This film is very serious with very little jokes and plays out more real life than Argo did.  This realism could not be done without the actors.  Jessica Chastain gives an amazing performance as she becomes more and more obsessed about finding Bin Laden.  Everyone else is good too, but they have smaller roles which is okay because the film is supposed to be led by Chastain.

     The film never goes into anyone’s background.  This is not a bad thing however, the film is about obsession and getting revenge.  We don’t need to know why Chastain cares so much about catching this man, you can speculate that she might have lost someone in 9/11 or that she just doesn’t like it when bad things happen to innocent people.  Other characters motivation could be that they just care about the country.  The reasons are never explained but they are there in subtle ways.

     This film is one of the best directed of the year.  Bigalow gets great performances out of all the actors.  The pacing of the film is great.  The movie is two and a half hours long, but does not feel that way.  Not much even happens, but the motivation of the characters and the fact that not one of them can seem to grasp on to any useful information keeps you invested in the story.  When they do however get a hold of a lead to Bin Laden, especially the last thirty minutes of the film it is some of the most intense sequences for film in a long while.  This also leads to some of the most telling and brutally honest endings to a film that have come out in years.

     Zero Dark Thirty is one of the most honest and hair raising films in the last few years.  The film has great performances all around and in my opinion is the best directed film this year.