December 2011 Archives

• Omer M. Mozaffar

I've seen scenes in this movie multiple times in multiple movies, yet I've never seen this movie before. Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War," is the story of the rise and decline of an arms trafficker (Nicholas Cage) and takes many predictable narrative steps. It is a list of cinematic clichés, from the personalities (even the names) of the characters, to the moments of suspense and surprise, to the preposterous ethnic stereotypes. It contains everything short of a protagonist dangling from a cliff or a racing bus driving through a fruit stand. Further, there is very little character development, very little revelation, and most of the characters are caricatures. Nevertheless, the final product is a thoroughly original, provocative satire that explores a violent decade of global peace and haunts you with an almost silent sinister laugh.

• Gerardo Valero in Mexico City

Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" (1971) may not be the greatest film of Clint Eastwood's career but its title character is certainly the one that best defines it. Looking back, it's hard to imagine it took five years for such an acclaimed picture to arrive here in Mexico. Censorship wasn't common in those days but there was something about "Harry." The only other feature that I can recall getting a similar treatment was "Two Minute Warning" with Charlton Heston. Both dealt with mad snipers on the loose so my guess is that someone decided it was better not to give anyone ideas.

• Omer M. Mozaffar

There is a 20 second moment in Jason Reitman's "Young Adult" that just floored me. Here is the story of a High School Prom Queen -- Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) - revisiting her hometown on a targeted mission to reclaim her old boyfriend. She walks through her parents' house and sees a large wedding photo. I thought it was a photo of her parents; her mother looks just like her? But, no, it is her own wedding. Not only do her parents keep the photo, but her father casually praises her ex-husband. I don't remember how long she's been divorced, but I was devastated just listening to his comments. Any normal parent would break his or her back to provide the child with every benefit; any child knows this. Still, the child also needs to hear the "I love you" and the "I value you" and the "I'm proud of you." But, when the child's ears hear, "I like your ex-spouse," from the two people she needs validation from, they are saying, "I like your ex-spouse, though he is worth nothing compared to you." What she instead hears is, "You're no good. You failed. I'm siding with him."

• Ali Arikan in Istanbul

A few weeks ago on Facebook -- that sly keeper of family secrets, whose memory seems to have increased incrementally with its new Timeline mumbo-jumbo -- an actor of some repute posted a list of the best Twitter accounts of 2011, as compiled by a wholly forgettable outlet. He had been placed relatively highly, and someone commented that it was a very subjective list. Apart from the fact that taking issue with "a list of the best Twitter accounts of 2011, lol" is by definition absurd, the statement presented a logical fallacy (I am fully aware of the irony of regarding a throwaway Facebook comment in such depth). All lists are subjective: that's why they're lists. Nonetheless, this fairly simple fact gets lost in the year-end frenzy as interested parties start calling for the list-maker's head, like angry villagers wielding pitchforks, if and when their favoured books, albums, films, etc fail to place on a given critic's compilation of the year's best.

• Gerardo Valero in Mexico City

Lawrence Kasdan's "Grand Canyon" didn't make a splash when it opened here in Mexico, and it's not the kind of feature that's ever shown on our TV, so hardly anybody I know has even heard about it. It's not an easy movie to describe. When people ask me about its subject, I say something like "It's about a group of people from Los Angeles living in despair who end up feeling better when they all get together and visit the Grand Canyon." Most of them seem to loose interest but the response of those who do see it is mostly overwhelming.

Watching "The Tree of Life" brought "Grand Canyon" to mind. The films couldn't be more different, but both deal with a search for a deeper meaning in our existence-- a sense of helplessness in trying to place ourselves in the grand scheme of things. They also lack defined plots or conventional structures.

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

To anyone who wants to watch an offbeat movie for the upcoming holiday season, "Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" can be a nice mixed bag full of the goodies to be appreciated. The movie is a dark, amusing horror fantasy with Santa Claus as a malevolent supernatural entity far different from the one we are familiar with. He surely knows whether you are naughty or not, but, instead of giving a present to you, he will punish you if he thinks you are naughty, and his punishment will not be merely shoving coal in your stocking. I have no clear idea about what exactly he can do to those poor naughty'children put into sacks, but I guess he is as savage as that murderous Robot Santa in the TV animation series "Futurama", one of whose memorable lines is "I'm going to tear off your skin like wrapping paper and deck the hall with your guts!"

• Omer M. Mozaffar

Religion takes you from darkness into light, and David Fincher's deeply religious "Fight Club" grows darker and darker still. Here, piety is anarchy; anarchy is destruction; self-destruction is ecstasy. It plays whimsical department store music while its broken shark teeth chew at you. Its sound, consistent plot leads straight to an abrasive, perhaps annoying schizophrenia. It is the Bodhisattva, Satyagraha, and the Masnavi mashed up and played backwards with the wrong device. This movie is the anti-movie, and it enjoys every moment of it.

• Omer M. Mozaffar

There are some American suburbs that are notorious for their high concentration of high powered parents who excel in their high class careers, spare no expense in raising precisely crafted children, and in the process completely abandon themselves, their spouses, and their children. That is one level of Alexander Payne's "The Descendants." This is such a rich movie that I'll have to watch it a few times to fairly appreciate all of its layers.

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

While revisiting David Michôd's "Animal Kingdom" (2010), I wondered what it was like for its passive teenager hero to live with his heroin addict mother at their small home. We can only assume that she definitely could not get the Mother of the Year award, considering the mundane but eerie opening sequence. It's around afternoon, and her son is watching some TV show, and she seems to be asleep next to him on couch - but we soon learn she died from an overdose.

• Olivia Collette in Montreal

The Internet is a nit-picky place, so I'm going to put it out there right away: I'm no linguist. But I've been bilingual since birth, and I also learned Italian, German and Spanish along the way. That's why it's always fascinated me how languages can be so functionally distinct.

I noticed that in Latin languages, nouns tend to describe what a thing is, while Germanic languages likely tell you what it does. A great example is the French word for skunk, "mouffette," which recalls the creature's billowing tail with "mouffe" and denotes its small size with "ette." Compare it to the German equivalent, "Stinktier," which literally means stinky animal.