Snow Angels takes flight

So I finally made it to the cinemas this week, unfortunately it is still something that is not on most people’s radar. Though just released, Snow Angels is playing on one of the smaller screens at the Embarcadero Center Cinema and sure to be out of theaters in a couple weeks. And perhaps for the best, it is not the strongest entry in the oeuvre of the young talented filmmaker David Gordon Green and seems unlikely to find a large audience. Previously handing in notable works such as All the Real Girls, George Washington, and most notably Undertow, he is still well below the cultural radar though his talent is remarkable, especially given he has finished his fourth feature by the age of 31.

The story concerns a group of small town folk all struggling to adjust to life around the event of a Very Bad Thing. The story hovers mostly around a teenager (played by Michael Angarano)at the local high school whose father just moved out for dubious reasons, his old babysitter (Kate Beckinsale) and her loser ex-husband (Sam Rockwell) who tries to reform and be a good father but just isn’t any good at it. There are also peripheral relationship issues with the teenager and his parents, the babysitter and her mother, and the ex-husband with about everybody.

This is not a plot driven movie. The characters are slowly drawn and developed until about halfway through the movie when the Very Bad Thing happens. Afterwards the movie focuses on how everyone near the incident reacts and changes. Green takes this as an opportunity to examine human frailty and subtle human strength in times of crisis.

A beautiful aspect of this film is the fact that these are very real people we are watching. Very real people with very real problems and very real hangups and very real emotion. Nothing is made grand or overwrought during or after the events involved, the easy tears are eschewed in favor of watching people change. Some evolve, some collapse (not unlike the movie’s tagline come to think of it, “Some will fall, some will fly”).

Where the movie falls short unfortunately is the casting of Kate Beckinsale. She’s just not that good. She’s fine when it comes to playing the friendly, flirty but conflicted mother in the first half, but when the drama unfolds she just doesn’t display the emotion required for the film’s most difficult moments. In later scenes involving her the drama ends up falling short. Scenes that really deserve more impact feel bland and weak. If Green couldn’t avoid casting Beckinsale in the role he should have at least minimized the time that she needs to feel grief on screen.

Rockwell on the other hand is surprisingly effective in those scenes. I’ve only ever noticed him in roles where he plays smarmy, funny guys with slight moments of drama (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Matchstick Men). This is quite the opposite for him. A mostly dramatic role with slight moments of comedy. Perhaps thats why it was a little hard getting used to him in the first half playing a down-on-his-luck loser of a father struggling to keep a job and be on time to take his daughter out for an afternoon. His born-again, sober character only feels slightly bogus because its obvious how much his character is working for it. It really isn’t very long at all before he returns to the bottle and lets everything in him fall out. And when the drama hits home for him its a cool simmer where you can actually watch a man break down quietly and slowly. Other movies with similar characters are often much more blunt in this respect, more heavy-handed. Rockwell goes for the subtlety and humanity of such a poor character and brilliantly succeeds.

Also well crafted is the story of the teenager who works with Beckinsale’s character and the romance that blossoms between him and the new girl at school. The relationship takes its time to develop and unfold letting the viewer feel the anxiety and beauty of young love as though they might be experiencing it all over again. Its soft and gentle and a marvel to watch. It is easily the warmest and most beautiful thing in the movie, which says a lot. Green took a whole movie to explore this realm with All the Real Girls, and here he lets us experience one more little taste of it while showing how it affects the boy in reaction to all that is happening around him. His is possibly the most well-drawn character in the film, but Green knows better to let him or any other character devour the scenery.

Up next for Green is the Judd Apatow-produced comedy The Pineapple Express starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. He seems like an odd choice to bring in as a hired director (this will mark the first film he makes that he didn’t write the script for), but should land him some much-deserved attention.  I’ve wanted for some time to see what Green can do with a budget, and this should give him a big chance and likely open some bigger doors for him in the future. Here is a director to pay attention to. One day people will be looking back over the early films of David Gordon Green and see his early evolution into the talented filmmaker that he will be soon recognized for. Time to get in on the ground floor while its still fleetingly there.

Netflix Frenzy

Netflix’s watched this week: Love in the Time of Cholera, the 1969 thriller Z, I am Curious (Yellow) and Melvin and Howard. I look forward to a better crop coming in a couple days when The Great McGinty and A Little Princess arrive.

I’m beginning to realize just how video-centric my blog has suddenly become. No point in nothing but film geekery and watching obscure movies just to write about them, sadly there’s been so little at the theaters really worth going to lately. Living in San Francisco there are some wonderful repertory theaters like the Castro, the Red Vic, the Roxie and sometimes the Lumiere that will show old films, but then I wish I was keeping up on contemporary movies for fear of losing my touched, devoted following of beloved readers.

April promises to be a much better month for it I think, there are releases like Leatherheads, My Blueberry Nights (whatta great title), Shine a Light, Street Kings, and yes… Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo. A full slate of promising, top-rate entertainment. Right now the only movies in theaters quasi-worth seeing might be Run Fatboy Run and Stop-Loss, but so far the available batch of Iraq movies have yet to distinguish themselves from Vietnam movies. Both genres seem to be about what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here-in-this-war kind of movies, and Vietnam covered that pretty well. Politics aside, I think important issues get discussed and all but it seems like most of these movies exist just to prove that particular point. The horror… the horror.

So I’m stuck on Netflix until something worth $10 to see comes around. In sticking with my theme then, Love in the Time of Cholera was alright, passable entertainment but ultimately forgettable. Javier Bardem is great as always, but the film had the unmistakable feel of a “great book adaptation.” This means that a great work of literature is given the sumptuous treatment replete with beautiful, lyrical photography, exotic locations, expensive, detailed sets, and large amounts of extras swarming around in the background. However it also suffers from the syndrome of the same genre where the filmmakers try to cram every bit of story from a very detailed book from an extremely detail-oriented writer and stuff it all into two hours. This usually results in the book missing the heart and soul that the book contains, while also glossing over some of the more lewd details of the plot (e.g. the lovers of the central characters are often made about ten years older in order to circumvent certain statutory-rape taboos). A great adaptation is much more focused on finding and exploring this heart and soul while not fussing over the plot details. Try instead films like The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Trainspotting to understand more what I mean.

Z was a tightly woven thriller surrounding the possible assassination of a public revolutionary in what seems to be Greece in the 60’s. Not quite what I expected, I think I anticipated something more on the lines of The Battle of Algiers or something, but it was more a story of the investigation that followed and the consequences. Entertaining and thought-provoking. Based on true events it was a response to the assassination of a Greek doctor and activist whose subsequent investigation led to the downfall of the Democratic government in Greece and ushered in a new, modern era. “Z” in Greek means “He lives.”

Melvin and Howard was also not what I expected. Its based on the true story (supposedly) that a man named Melvin Dummar finds a decrepit man laying hurt in the desert and gives him a ride back to Las Vegas. Along the way he professes to be Howard Hughes. After Hughes died, an amount left in a Hughes will left the amount of $156 million to Melvin. I think I expected Howard to be in the movie more, where instead he’s almost completely done after the first ten minutes, and then tells Melvin’s story up until the will is discovered. I found him to be a pretty uninteresting character, someone who can’t hold a job, a wife, or just about anything he owns, and ultimately he received the full bounty of the American Dream for it. I think I was just expecting Jason Robards as Howard Hughes to be in the picture more. When you pay for Jason Robards and all you get is Paul le Mat its easy to feel a little cheated. Still, the story of the American Dream touching down anywhere at all is still very heartwarming.

I am Curious (Yellow) was the controversial 1967 Swedish import that was seized at US Customs for being obscene. It subsequently won a landmark case with the Supreme Court that helped  usher in a new age of filmmaking in the US. It tells the story of a 22 year old girl who is curious about everything around her to the point that she explores the things that incite the most passion in her, namely politics and sex. An interestingly told story, I read about this film while in film school and thought it was mostly going to be a sexual exploration. Its really mostly about politics. Swedish radicals who want their government to condemn the US in Vietnam, who want to close the borders between Sweden and Franco-era Spain, and who want to adopt the non-violence teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. (who is interviewed in the film) for use by their own country’s soldiers. The film combines film and documentary and bizarre social commentary in a very unique way, with the directory of the film Vilgot Sjoman showing up as himself directing the film as it progresses, and also showing jealousy towards the main actress during her affair with a man named Borje, after it shows Vilgot and the actress having an affair at the beginning of the film. A two-part film, the companion piece I am Curious (Blue)  should be arriving in a few weeks. I’ll write more about it then I think.