The Best Movie I Saw Last Week: The Tree of Life

This week was also a little light on movies but the quality was amazing: Antonioni, Almodóvar, Von Trier... A lot of amazing directors. But in the end I have to choose a Cannes winner (fitting, since we are in the middle of the festival): The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011).

The movie might have been controversial but to me it is simply perfect. I am not a religious person in any way but this movie speaks to me about spirituality and I want to listen. It helps that it's not pandering (as some people want to see it) but a reflective movie that, like our young protagonist, might not have everything figured it out. The movie deals with the divine but also with the human, with how our choices shape who we become, how the way of grace and the way of nature always wrestle inside us.

Visually, it is one of the most sumptuous films I have ever seen, every shot is beautiful and meaningful and it is a contemporary tragedy that Emmanuel Lubezki lost the cinematography Oscar to Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011). Aurally, the movie is astounding too, not only for the perfect musical selection but also for Desplat score and for the very inspired voiceovers that appear throughout the film.

The performances are terrific. If I ruled the world, Hunter McCracken would have been nominated and both Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain would have won. I remember one of the happiest seconds in my life was the confusion when they announced the nomination of Jessica Chastain  for The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011) and the picture that appeared was from The Tree of Life and I was able to think for a moment that she had been nominated for the right role. Alas, it was not to be. The movie was nominated for three Oscars, losing one to Hugo and two (picture and director) to The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011) when, as it was clear in Cannes, this was the superior movie. And don't worry, time will tell.

Other movies I saw this week:

The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)

Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012) [Rewatch]

Transamerica (Duncan Tucker, 2005) [Rewatch]

Neighbors (Nicholas Stoller, 2014)

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2014)

The Double (Richard Ayoade, 2014)

Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

Melancholia (Lars Von Trier, 2011) [Rewatch]

La Piel que Habito (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011) [Rewatch]

The Best Movie(s) I Saw This Week: 30s Double Feature

Even though this week I watched some true stinkers (How can Divergent be so terrible?), I had the good luck to see two classics from the 30s. And since I could not choose, I've decided to cheat a little and select them both as movies of the week.

First, I watched (for the third time!) It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934) and it was every bit as wonderful as the other two times.

It was the first movie to win the five Big Awards at the Oscars (Picture, Director, Screenplay and both leading performers) and rightfully so. The script is witty, smart and extremely funny while also being quite tender and romantic. It even manages to touch on the contemporary depression while staying light and classy. Both Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are charm personified. They are so talented and so game in this movie. The two scenes I like best are the hitchhiking one and the one where they pretend to be married so the police doesn't find her and they pretend-scream and pretend-fight. Oh, and I was already forgetting the Flying Trapeze song! It is just a sweet scene that does not advance the plot but it lets us see the characters warming to each other being goofy, sweet and so crush-worthy. Capra's direction is top-notch too. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

The second 30s classic I watched was brand-new to me but I had anticipated for a while and it did not disappoint. In fact it exceeded expectations. I'm talking about Stage Door (Gregory LaCava, 1937).

Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn star as aspiring actresses and they are amazing both in their bickering repartees in the beginning of the movie as in their complicity towards the end. As if this was not enough, the rest of the cast is incredibly good and the scenes with all the girls in the boarding house living room are delicious. The script is also extremely intelligent not only in the hilarious one-liners but also, going somewhere deeper, in what it says about relationships among women. LaCava's direction is great too; I just love shots with a lot of people acting together and in this movie, they never seem stuffy or theatrical. It is, quite simply, another masterpiece.

Other films I watched this week:

Carmina y Amén (Paco León, 2014)

Corpo Celeste (Alice Rohrwacher, 2011)

Austenland (Jerusha Hess, 2013)

Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014)

The Best Movie I Saw This Week: Mean Girls

This week has been lighter than usual but thanks to a 10th anniversary, I rewatched a modern masterpiece: Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004). The movie has been everywhere around the internet this past week (I especially liked this article by The Playlist) and with good reason. Other than in what concers Regina's flare jeans, it has not aged a day.

First things first, it is still tremendously funny. Basically, every line is quotable on an everyday basis. As it has been ponted out, its humour is not based on references but has a more timeless quality about it and that is why it endures today. 

Also, all performances are on point, which is not always the case in this kind of film (e.g. What was going on with Lisa Kudrow in Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010)?). But, of course, some sort of ranking is mandatory and Rachel McAdams as Regina George is queen bee in that aspect too. She should have been nominated for an Oscar (and probably win, if it wasn't for Natalie Portman's category fraud in Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)). The way she times every aggresive smile is just perfect. On second place I would put Amanda Seyfried's Karen because she manages to layer the character that, on paper, might have been the simplest one. Seyfried's Karen is not just dumb, although she is very dumb. Third place would be Amy Poehler who is simply better at everything than the rest of humans (I already love her in the trailer for They Came Together (David Wain, 2014)). It would be so awesome to reunite her and McAdams as mother-daughter in a comedy. Then, I would mention Lizzy Caplan as Janis because it is something very different than what she does today. The rest of the cast is also very good and it is a movie where even the extras with just a line are funny.

In a word, this movie is so fetch.

Other films I watched this week:

OSS 117: Le Caire, Nid d'Espions (Michel Hazanavicius, 2006)

La Vida Inesperada (Jorge Torregrossa, 2014)

Mogari No Mori (Naomi Kawase, 2007)

That Awkward Moment (Tom Gormican, 2014)

The Best Movie I Saw This Week: Alice in Wonderland

This week, most of the films I saw were part of our Cannes Proje(c)t. And the quality was very, very high. But eventually, I chose a movie outside the project, Alice in Wonderland (Clyde Geromini et al, 1951), as the best movie of the week. I had watched the Disney Classic before and I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

It is most likely the funniest film in the Disney Canon, with an absurdist and exaggerated sense of humour that I have to say, is perfectly encaptured in the Spanish dubbing of the film. I am a Nazi when it comes to seeing films in the Original Version but some of the Spanish Disney voices are so ingrained in my brain that it does not make sense watching them in any other way.

Another remarkable thing about the film is its rythm. Once Alice falls down the rabbit hole, it's non-stop crazy. It's impossible to play favorites; if I had to choose the parts I like best I'd go with the door, the dodo, and I would just list every moment in the film in chronological order. I mean, what's not to love? The story about the oysters is so delicious (like the oysters were!) and the scene with the flowers is so funny and original. The caterpillar is one of the most literal scenes from the wonderful novel. The one at the White Rabbit's house is so great with poor Bill. And the Cheshire Cat and the cards and the Queen and the trial and of course, the most iconic scene in the movie, the unbirthday party.

Alice in Wonderland is probably the only Disney film without a lesson to learn at the end, something very basic if you know the novel, that the Tim Burton version got wrong (among so many other things). And that is so cool because our heroine does not need to learn a lesson other than the one her sister is droning on about. I just love Alice as a character so much. She is funny, polite when she needs to be but generally she doesn't give a fuck what the crazy people in Wonderland think of her. I think that in this age of overpraising mediocre films such as Frozen (Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, 2013) for not being medieval in their representation of women, it's a good idea to turn to the classics to see how things were done.

Other films I watched this week:

Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh, 2000)

Heremakono (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2003)

Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002)

The Return (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2003)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, 2014)

Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005)

Tiempo de Valientes (Damián Szifrón, 2005)
Tiresia (Bertrand Bonello, 2003)
The Three Burials of Melquíades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)

The best movie I saw last week

I had intented to write a little bit about every film I watch in this blog but it gets daunting when I've had a good week like the past one. So, instead, I decided to focus on one movie each week. The best one, ideally.

And even though this week I've seen a lot of amazing five-star films, there was really no contest. The best movie of the week is:

A Passage to India (David Lean, 1984)

For all good things that posmodernity has given us, there is something to be said about neo-classicism in contemporary film. Its peak is most likely Lean's A Passage to India, but can also be appreciated in Minghella's The English Patient (1996) or Cold Mountain (2003).

This is not to say that they are old-fashioned movies or out of date. They are, especially A Passage to India, thoroughly modern as the best classic movies were in their time. The movie has a classical narrative pulse but the story it tells us is contemporary even though it is set in the past. I'm sure it has been read through the prism of post-colonialism and post-feminism and it is a natural thing, because when a text is as rich as this one, every angle is worthwhile.

The supporting cast is extremely good, Peggy Ashcroft's Oscar is possibly one of the most deserved, but this is Judy Davis' show. Adela is a smart and complex character on paper but Davis layers it so thoughtfully that it is impossible not to be mesmerized by her.

David Lean is one director in an extinct breed. His command of the action, of the shots filled with people, of the shots filled only with a face, is astonishing and has provided us with one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Other films I saw this week:

Anna Christie (Clarence Brown, 1930)

Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

Shirley Valentine (Lewis Gilbert, 1989)

The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993)

Min and Bill (George W. Hill, 1930)

The Letter (William Wyler, 1940)

Face to Face (Ingmar Bergman, 1976)

Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski, 1936)

I'll Cry Tomorrow (Daniel Mann, 1955)

Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)

Kes (Ken Loach, 1970)

Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1992)

Vacas (Julio Medem, 1992)

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994)

Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996)

Away From Her (Sarah Polley, 2007) [Rewatch]

Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999)

In general, it has been a ridiculously good week in terms of quality, heavy on Best Actress Nominees on the beginning and with the Cannes Proje(c)t 2014 (about which I intend to blog about) later in the week.

Happy Endings!

Inspired by The Film Experience's Mad Men at the Movies, I decided to do the same (that is, compiling movie references) with a different TV show: Happy Endings. The show, now unjustly cancelled started exactly three years ago today.

I'm really looking forward to dissecting every reference. It's going to be amahzing!

Welcome to the neighbourhood!