Deep Focus tag:www.deep-focus.com,2008-10-09://2 2010-08-18T22:22:30Z Deep Focus Movie Reviews and Weblog Movable Type Pro 5.01 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1977 2010-08-17T22:45:38Z 2010-08-19T12:50:35Z Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is an exotic multiplex confection – a romantic comedy with elements of its visual grammar swiped from comic books and videogames. It's tempting to say that people who are sick of conventional Hollywood love stories will find a bracing alternative here but, unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim isn't much of a love story, unless the affair you're interested in is the one between a boy and his cultural totems. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is an exotic multiplex confection – a romantic comedy with elements of its visual grammar swiped from comic books and videogames. It's tempting to say that people who are sick of conventional Hollywood love stories will find a bracing alternative here but, unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim isn't much of a love story, unless the affair you're interested in is the one between a boy and his cultural totems. If that's the case, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World should be hugely entertaining. It's a visual knock-out with the sensibility of a pinball machine, caroming from one set piece to the next, turning on lights and spinning little flippy things and ringing bells. It's not Speed Racer – it remains genuinely character-focused and never aims to overwhelm. But it's playful, borrowing concepts like power-ups and extra lives from the RPGs and adventure games that have made them an intuitive part of a certain kind of narrative grammar for a generation.]]> After.Life tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1976 2010-08-06T20:33:36Z 2010-08-06T21:46:41Z Perhaps funded and distributed on the promise of Christina Ricci in her skivvies and less, After.Life is weirdly compelling for such a marginal movie. Its premise is a little coy, toying with the expectations of audiences that have had their fill, lately, of stories with characters caught in some strange limbo between living and dying where they work out the psychological issues that hectored them in the real world. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Perhaps funded and distributed on the promise of Christina Ricci in her skivvies and less, After.Life is weirdly compelling for such a marginal movie. Its premise is a little coy, toying with the expectations of audiences that have had their fill, lately, of stories with characters caught in some strange limbo between living and dying where they work out the psychological issues that hectored them in the real world.]]> Django tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1974 2010-08-04T00:31:53Z 2010-08-04T00:40:17Z When Django, the title character and hero of director Sergio Corbucci's seminal spaghetti western, first appears on screen, he's slogging on foot through mud, dragging a coffin behind him. The image is evocative and challenging. In classic American films, western heroes had generally been dignified cowboy types saddled up on strong horses. They were lawmen or simple ranchers with a code of honor. They rode into town in a cloud of dust and plainspoken righteousness backed up by a sharp eye and a six-shooter, and they stood for the endurance of traditional values on a wild frontier. Django thinks those guys were pussies. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Franco Nero in <em>Django</em>

When Django, the title character and hero of director Sergio Corbucci's seminal spaghetti western, first appears on screen, he's slogging on foot through mud, dragging a coffin behind him. The image is evocative and challenging. In classic American films, western heroes had generally been dignified cowboy types saddled up on strong horses. They were lawmen or simple ranchers with a code of honor. They rode into town in a cloud of dust and plainspoken righteousness backed up by a sharp eye and a six-shooter, and they stood for the endurance of traditional values on a wild frontier.

Django thinks those guys were pussies.

Read the full review at FilmFreakCentral.]]> Life During Wartime tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1972 2010-07-23T11:52:26Z 2010-07-23T14:08:41Z Count me among the great admirers of Todd Solondz’ Happiness. Some viewers complained that Solondz mocked his characters, but I never got that. As far as I could see, that was his achievement. Without passing judgment, he investigated the failures of some of the least among us — the failed songwriter, the unlucky in love — and dug out the humanity among the worst of us -- the obscene phone caller, the pedophile. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Count me among the great admirers of Todd Solondz’ Happiness. Some viewers complained that Solondz mocked his characters, but I never got that. As far as I could see, that was his achievement. Without passing judgment, he investigated the failures of some of the least among us -- the failed songwriter, the unlucky in love -- and dug out the humanity among the worst of us -- the obscene phone caller, the pedophile. The result was an uneasy mix of tone. It wasn’t quite comedy and it wasn’t quite melodrama. You weren’t sure whether to be amused or appalled, and the fact that Solondz could elicit a horrified titter of recognition at some of the most base material showed that he kept the human in human behavior.]]> Inception tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1971 2010-07-16T02:57:32Z 2010-07-23T14:08:35Z Christopher Nolan’s films tend to be ruminations on loss and regret — tender morsels of bleeding humanity wrapped in an increasingly glossy, protective coating of hard-edged technical sophistication. The films are things of beauty, precisely constructed and expertly executed. But you wouldn’t want to live there. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com

Note: If you're allergic to SPOILERS, you probably don't want to read this review before seeing the film. If you'd like to try anyway, or if you're willing to give it a skim, I've tried to keep them to the latter half of the review, and I've marked the spot where the spoilers begin in earnest.

Christopher Nolan’s films tend to be ruminations on loss and regret — tender morsels of bleeding humanity wrapped in an increasingly glossy, protective coating of hard-edged technical sophistication. When you get past the estimable Hollywood sparkle, you find simple dramas tightly wound around the center of each film. Leonard Shelby loses his memory and gains the capacity for infinite self-delusion. Bruce Wayne loses his parents and sacrifices his own life for the public good. Robert Angier nurtures a revenge scheme that blossoms into an endlessly cloned act of self-destruction. To be a Nolan protagonist is to perch on a razor’s edge between reason and impulse, between sanity and mania, between reality and dark dreams of aggrandizement and/or immolation of the self. The films are things of beauty, precisely constructed and expertly executed. But you wouldn’t want to live there.]]> Dogtooth tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1970 2010-07-06T21:32:47Z 2010-07-16T03:24:58Z Like last year's excellent Belgian film Home, with which it shares a certain dark comedy (but not the earlier film's reluctant optimism), it features a wife and children who exist largely apart from the larger world into which the male breadwinner ventures on a daily basis. But where that separation in Home was generally a question of geography, in Dogtooth it's a matter of patriarchy. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com This no-frills film-festival favorite from Greece is a single-family scenario. Like last year's excellent Belgian film Home, with which it shares a certain dark comedy (but not the earlier film's reluctant optimism), it features a wife and children who exist largely apart from the larger world into which the male breadwinner ventures on a daily basis. But where that separation in Home was generally a question of geography, in Dogtooth it's a matter of patriarchy.]]> The White Ribbon tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1969 2010-06-28T02:39:32Z 2010-07-07T01:50:14Z The White Ribbon is executed at an incredibly high level of craft and with an off-putting degree of self-confidence. While it is, at times, a movie of preternatural beauty, Haneke is confident that he's shining a light into the dark corners of recent human history, and he comes on like a preacher reading from the Book of Revelation. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Roxane Duran in <i>The White Ribbon</i> My review of The White Ribbon is online at www.filmfreakcentral.net:

The White Ribbon is executed at an incredibly high level of craft and with an off-putting degree of self-confidence. While it is, at times, a movie of preternatural beauty, Haneke is confident that he's shining a light into the dark corners of recent human history, and he comes on like a preacher reading from the Book of Revelation.]]> The Killer Inside Me tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1966 2010-06-18T00:06:15Z 2010-07-07T01:48:56Z It's impossible to really film The Killer Inside Me. As soon as you dramatize the events in question for a movie camera you make them real in a way that they're not, quite, when they're still sitting on the page. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Casey Affleck in <em>The Killer Inside Me</em>

It's impossible to really film The Killer Inside Me. It's a question of medium -- you can't replicate the book's suffocating interior monologue, the puffed-up rant and ramble of a serial killer, because as soon as you dramatize the events in question for a movie camera you make them real in a way that they're not, quite, when they're still sitting on the page. It's the old question of show versus tell.

]]> Winter’s Bone tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1965 2010-06-17T00:57:02Z 2010-08-15T18:04:11Z Opening with an understated, mood-setting vocal performance of "The Missouri Waltz" as a soundtrack for imagery captured deep, deep within flyover country, Winter's Bone hinges largely on the execution of a simple idea — it's a formula mystery story set in rural Missouri. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Jennifer Lawrence in <i>Winter's Bone</i> Opening with an understated, mood-setting vocal performance of "The Missouri Waltz" as a soundtrack for imagery captured deep, deep within flyover country, Winter's Bone hinges largely on the execution of a simple idea — it's a formula mystery story set in rural Missouri.]]> The Deadly Duo tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1961 2010-06-06T18:53:34Z 2010-06-06T21:12:36Z This 1971 Shaw Brothers martial-arts flick is definitely full of action — energetic camerawork, gallons of stage blood, and a widescreen frame full of gracefully choreographed movement on the part of dozens of performers wielding an impressive variety of... Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com <i>The Deadly Duo</i> This 1971 Shaw Brothers martial-arts flick is definitely full of action — energetic camerawork, gallons of stage blood, and a widescreen frame full of gracefully choreographed movement on the part of dozens of performers wielding an impressive variety of weapons all contribute to the film's sense of urgent forward motion. ]]> Splice tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1958 2010-06-05T01:46:13Z 2010-08-15T18:14:31Z When Splice is in full flower, there's something magnificent about it. In a multiplex environment, this film is a kind of genetic freak — a highly sexualized hard-R monster movie about bad parenting and the ethics of biogenetics. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Delphine Chanéac and Sarah Polley in <i>Splice</i>

What happens when your child rebels against you? That's the subject at the emotional core of Splice, an unsettling and skillfully mounted psychodrama that has some of the flavor of 1970s body-horror (mainly Alien and early David Cronenberg) mixed up with a contemporary retelling of the Frankenstein story. The complexity of the question is notched up by the film's science fiction premise, which has the husband-and-wife team of Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) working in secret to create a new life form that jumbles human DNA in what seems to be a nearly random combination with that of other species.

]]> Exit Through the Gift Shop tag:www.deep-focus.com,2010://2.1953 2010-05-04T00:15:01Z 2010-08-15T18:07:13Z No doubt at least a little bored with his status as the standard-bearer internationally for street art, Banksy takes his career to the next logical step with this documentary-essay film. Exit Through the Gift Shop purports at first to chronicle the street-art movement, vérité style, but eventually reveals itself as a treatise on Bad Art and a screed against tone-deaf patterns of consumption that, the film argues, drive trends in the art world. Bryant Frazer http://www.deep-focus.com Banksy in <em>Exit Through the Gift Shop</em> No doubt at least a little bored with his status as the standard-bearer internationally for street art, Banksy takes his career to the next logical step with this documentary-essay film. Exit Through the Gift Shop purports at first to chronicle the street-art movement, vérité style, but eventually reveals itself as a treatise on Bad Art and a screed against what the film argues are tone-deaf patterns of consumption that drive trends in the art world.]]>