RAGING BULL:

Impeccably made, unusually constructed, and swollen to bursting with cinematic verve, I'm hard pressed to find anything compelling to critique about Raging Bull off hand, and I have to imagine it's probably one of at least the top 5 most gorgeous post-color black & white films I've ever seen. But beautiful a piece of film-making as it is, I have the same problem with Raging Bull I have with the few other Scorsese movies I've seen (Taxi Driver comes to mind) -- that is, I just don't particularly enjoy it. It's certainly not the level of unpleasantness or the relatively unsympathetic characters, per se; I enjoy many movies with those elements; and there's so much going on, particularly in Raging Bull, that I admire. Yet somehow, for all his talent, Scorsese often leaves me cold, even agitated. Maybe it has something to do with Deniro, who I experience a similar feeling about. Maybe the confining Catholicism triggers a bad association; maybe I just don't like Italians, New York, or anything else about his general subject matter; maybe all of the above; maybe none of it. I really don't know. I don't even like listening to Scorsese talk. Nothing against him, and I did like Goodfellas -- I can't explain it. But -- particularly in the case of Raging Bull -- I'm not sure I've ever been exposed to such clearly high caliber work, that I just cannot find it in myself to enjoy. Yeah, it's not meant to be "enjoyable," but that's not what I mean. A really good piece of art, film or otherwise, inspires me. That's why I get so into it and ramble on for paragraphs about every other thing I see. But with Scorsese ... nothing, somehow. He just leaves me oddly blank, as if some kind of aesthetic and emotional reset button has been hit. Perhaps something will eventually click and I'll be able to take something a little more ... useful? ... away from his films. But then, perhaps not. Anyway, as has happened before with Scorsese and for better or worse, I somehow end up more preoccupied with my own response than the work itself.

K

A History of Violence:

My experience with Cronenberg suffers from unfamiliarity with a few of his most celebrated films (The Fly and Naked Lunch, in particular) but the majority of what I've seen from him has left me with mixed feelings at best. I generally find myself a little bored with his ponderous and visually bland brand of surrealism. So while I do find him to be an artist, who selects interesting projects, I'm not what you'd call a true fan. However, his latest two films -- A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and the more recent EASTERN PROMISES -- have gone a little ways towards potentially changing that. They're much more conservative in approach than what I saw in some of his earlier movies, but not nearly as dull as 2002's interminable and mostly forgettable SPIDER. Each of these two more recent Cronenberg movies has a compelling central narrative conceit. He finds a way to approach those conceits in a subtle, interesting way, but without sacrificing the suspense and entertainment.

I have friends who've expressed a bit of boredom with this new, more controlled and down-to-earth seeming Cronenberg, but I think the conservativism plays to his strengths as a director, and the results are fairly impeccable on their own terms. Personally, I think I still prefer the smoky but plausible Russian underworld presented in EASTERN PROMISES to the inverted Americana of HISTORY, which for all its merits, felt a little incomplete to me, somehow. However, that said, both are pretty strong films, well worth seeing. Cronenberg and Viggo seem to be a good team, and Cronenberg's next project will probably be a lot higher on my radar thanks to my experience with these last two.

K

Cronenberg's biggest weakness has always been his endings. He sets up these bizarre worlds, but can't figure out where to go with them. Thus, I watch him more for the moody imagery he creates than for his narratives. Even his straightforward stuff like EP falls apart at the end. However, using less phantasmagoric stories fits him just fine, since he's always been more of a logical thinker trying to create nightmares than a truly surrealistic artist (this is particularly evident in what's wrong with SPIDER). With the exception of VIDEODROME, you never get lost within his dreamworlds; it always seems like he's filming them from a distance, grounded in a saner reality, like look how fucked up these people are.

I like the narratives, at least on HISTORY and EP, but I agree they're missing a hard-to-pin-down "something" that would make them more complete feeling pieces of work. I'm not sure how I feel about the endings to those, and I don't remember the endings to some of his others very well. I tend to find his imagery a little dull -- if you were to lump him in under the "surrealism" label superficially, he's like cinema's Magritte. Then again, I haven't seen a few of his most explicitly visual films.

There's definitely a stodgy blandness to Cronenberg though, a lot of his stories feel too skeletal and intellectualized and lack some kind of spark. But this only prevents him from being among my favorites, his work in HISTORY and EP is rewarding nonetheless. This is despite the fact that his meditations on split identities feel somewhat empty of actual content. I.e. cliches like "you never know who people really are" and "everyone wears masks" are about all I take away on that front. It's not nearly as compelling to me as what Lynch does with the same theme, though I suspect you're in the same camp there.

K

I also saw CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON again the other day, and just found it plain boring to return to, even fast-forwarding through parts; there are any number of less self-consciously arty martial arts pictures that I find more compelling, especially among the HK classics. I do think Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh are wonderful performers, though.

K

Especially Michelle Yeoh, who should have won an Oscar for her performance in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film has it's wacky moments, but the acting (for most of the major players) was top notch...IMO.

The DVD is marked down to $5 at Target

Just got back from "Up In the Air." I liked it a lot. A good anti-Valentines Day choice.

Warren Beatty's Shampoo

I finally saw Up in the Air last week. I liked it more than I thought I would. Only complaint was the doofus who played the brother-in-law and how much they made him out to be such a loser. It was like a watered down version of Randy Quaid's character from National Lampoon's Vacation. The trailers gave the impression that the younger girl was going to be Clooney's love interest, which I was hoping wouldn't be the case. My DVD player has a timer that counts down the time remaining, so when the big romantic moment was coming up and there was still twenty minutes to go, it was a bit guessable. Still a nice little punch to the gut.

The DVD has an alternate ending where Clooney buys a a nice condo, some furniture, a car, etc. and tries to lure Vera Farminga (was that really her back side, or a body double?) to settle down with him there, but they can't make their schedules fit and he just slumps back into his own travels. The thatrical ending is much more powerful. It's a bit strange how finished the alternate material is, though — mastered film, editing, music — so I'm guessing this version was presented to a test audience for their reaction.