43rd New York Film Festival Reviews September 23 - October 9, 2005 Photographed by Evan Sung

Steven Soderbergh’s
Bubble
43rd Annual New York Film Festival 2005

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

Steven Soderbergh is a true wonder. The Oscar-winning director manages to weave in and out of the Hollywood mainstream (In: Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s 11 & 12, Out: The Limey & Full Frontal) and is even able to merge the two on occasion (Traffic, Out of Sight).

His latest film, Bubble, is about as far away from mainstream filmmaking as one can get. Soderbergh is a savvy and clever auteur yet his experiment with Bubble seems like an attempt to return to cinematic purity. There’s a deliberate lack of pretension at work here that makes it a powerful and penetrating picture.

Bubble is filmed docu-style and features non-professional actors. The story (written by Coleman Hough who wrote Full Frontal) is told in a straightforward and simple manner. And it’s exactly in that simple storytelling that Soderbergh is able to transfix us...reach us.

Audiences used to car crashes and super-human stunts may find themselves perplexed, even bored by Bubble, but those who are able to stay seated will find themselves privy to something quite profound.

Martha (Debbie Doeberiener) is an overweight, lonely, middle-age worker at a doll factory. She has an unspoken crush on Kyle, her apathetic, teen co-worker (Dustin James Ashley). The arrival of a young, pretty, but shady new employee upsets their relationship and ultimately drives the story to an astonishing climax.

The film perfectly captures the mundane world of a Midwestern small town, pregnant with a host of larvelling demons that boredom begets.

Doeberiener is simply amazing as the ticking time bomb. One particularly frightening close-up of her face says everything about the film’s themes as well as the living monsters that our (increasingly poverty-stricken) country has created.

Ashley is either a born actor OR he’s simply playing himself. Regardless, it is a pitch-perfect teen portrayal. Misty Dawn Wilkins handles the role of interloper/troublemaker Rose, with tremendous zest.

Quite a number of films (most recently Gus Van Sant’s overrated Elephant) have attempted to deal with the underbelly of Middle America and why we are so prone to crazed violence. Bubble is one of the few that is truly scary because it feels so bloody real--filled with the nuances of the ordinary that can lead to the catastrophic extraordinary.

Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker that continuously challenges himself as an artist and, consequently, his audience. As far as I’m concerned, he has yet to disappoint.

George Clooney's
Good Night and Good Luck
43rd Annual New York Film Festival 2005
Opening Night Film

Reviewed by Evan Sung

The Film Society of Lincoln Center kicks off its 43rd Annual New York Film Festival with what is undoubtedly one of the most noble, well-intentioned and relevant American films of the year, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck. The film, Mr. Clooney’s second, is a look into journalism legend Edward R. Murrow’s on-air campaign to shed light on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s underhanded crusade against the spectre of Communism in America.

Built around extensive archival footage of the era and shot in a silky black and white, the film is a faithful and loving recreation of the late 1950’s. David Strathairn plays Murrow, and Clooney appears as Fred Friendly, Murrow’s loyal producer on the weekly news program “See It Now.” In the face of network anxiety and pressure from network sponsors, Murrow builds a public case against McCarthy’s dubious methods. His program, his words, and the response of the television viewing public leads eventually to a Senate investigation of the Senator McCarthy’s actions and the end of his notorious witchhunts. Mr. Clooney was so concerned with verisimilitude that he chose not to cast an actor as his Joe McCarthy, instead using real footage of the Senator himself. This period fidelity makes for a fascinating look at the realities of the era, the straightfaced ads for Kent cigarettes, the injunction at CBS against marriage between co-workers, the theatricality of McCarthy’s own viciousness.

But nostalgia is an alluring siren song, and about halfway through the film, you get the sense that between vintage clips and David Straithairn’s readings of Murrow’s transcripts, there isn’t much “there” there. Where Clooney’s first film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was a bold, slightly arch attempt to display his style and talent behind the camera, Good Night feels tentative. Mr. Clooney has gone the other way here and taken pains to suppress his directorial voice, confined by his reverence of Murrow, the noble newscaster sent to right the world’s wrongs. It’s as if Mr. Clooney were hugging the wall of a pool, afraid to cut loose and roam into the deep end. This also has implications for the film as a comment on contemporary affairs. The film draws clear parallels between the fearmongering of the 50s and our own terrorist-era anxieties, but they don’t so much resonate as wishfully long for how things used to be, how things should or could be.

It should be said that the film is stirring and does achieve thrilling moments in depicting the inherent drama of Murrow confronting demagoguery through the television screen. And Strathairn gives a performance of subtle glances, twitches, and reactions that convey the interior world of Murrow and turn the task of reading Murrow’s transcripts into a real dramatic role.

Mr. Clooney deserves credit for using his money and clout to realize a project
that doesn’t have obvious commercial appeal, and to do it with no small degree of artistry, with a team of committed performers. Mr. Clooney is taking tentative but real steps towards becoming an influential player in Hollywood cinema both in front of and behind the camera. Good Night should bring him a healthy dose of critical respect to go with the overabundance of Rat-Pack-redux charm that has already won over audiences around the world.

Lincoln Center |165 West 65th Street,
( between Broadway and Amsterdam)

Lars Von Trier’s
Manderlay
43rd Annual New York Film Festival 2005

Reviewed by Frank J. Avella

An up front admission: I consider Lars Von Trier’s Dogville to be one of the most astonishing, audacious and groundbreaking films of the last decade. I was appalled by the way the film was completely mishandled and barely-released by USA Films. I was outraged by it’s lack of winning any year-end awards. I was disgusted by how so many seemingly intelligent critics dismissed it as anti-American.

Dogville remains a bold piece of filmmaking from a true genius and will most definitely grow in stature among cinefiles (and hopefully among audiences.) Now that I’ve gotten that out...

Because of my obviously-strong Dogville feelings, I approached the second picture in a planned trilogy, Manderlay, with excited anticipation and absolute fear. How could it possibly be as good? And how could we accept Ron Howard’s novice daughter as Grace after Nicole Kidman’s brilliant, nuanced performance? (Kidman pulled out due to scheduling conflicts).

Manderlay picks up where Dogville left off. It’s 1933 and Grace (now Bryce Dallas Howard) is traveling with her father (now Willem Dafoe) and his mob thugs through the South. While stopped outside a plantation in Alabama called Manderlay, they encounter a world where slavery is still in full swing--despite the fact that it was abolished some seventy years earlier.

Grace is flummoxed by this and, against her father’s wishes, decides to stay at Manderlay and right the wrong she indignantly sees.

Upon the matriarch Mam’s death (an intense Lauren Bacall), Grace immediately frees the slaves and punishes the owners, much to the dismay of the elder house slave, Wilhelm (Danny Glover). And thus begins the wildly fascinating and psychologically engrossing story which I will not ruin by giving any more away.

Von Trier utilizes the same Brechtian set (hybridizing theatre and film), the same hand-held cam technique and the same sardonic John Hurt narration--all of which worked perfectly in Dogville and do so here as well.

And while his hand seems steadier and this film tighter, his writing is just as sharp and his hypotheses, even more daring as he relentlessly continues to probe the evil inherent in human nature. It’s an engaging and layered script that trumps the obvious for much more absorbing and creative ideas and theories.

Von Trier is a fearless filmmaker (ironic because in his personal life he is so rattled with them--including a fear of traveling). His ideas can be viewed as dangerous simply because they go against popular opinion.

To complain that Manderlay (or Dogville for that matter) is anti-American, is to miss the point completely. If presenting human behavior in a realistic and accurate way is too painful, perhaps we Americans need to take a good hard look at the injustices we cause others and stop arrogantly holding ourselves up as the example to the world.

Manderlay does comment on the ridiculous and simplistic notion that one can simply force democracy on a people that have been ignorant to it, without problems or repercussions via Grace’s need to democratized the slaves. A timely theme with the current situation in Iraq. But Von Trier does not judge Grace for her naivete. Yes, she is thinking too simplistically but her heart is in the right place.

Bryce Howard is not Nicole Kidman. Nor does she try to be. Her Grace is less compelling, more idealistic, but she manages to deliver the goods necessary to anchor Manderlay in place. We understand her Grace almost immediately and, therefore, relate to her. Howard is quite a find.

The supporting cast is uniformly outstanding. Of particular note are: Mona Hammond, Zeljko Ivanek, and, most especially, Danny Glover.

As he did in Dogville, Von Trier surprises us in the last fifteen minutes of Manderlay. And while the jolt may not be quite as explosive, it packs it’s own provocatively powerful punch and leaves the audience wanting more (which we will luckily get in the final chapter of his opus, Washington, scheduled to shoot in 2007).

The auteur ends Manderlay, same as Dogville, with David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ on the soundtrack as images depicting U.S. racism and violence flash onscreen. It is just as potent.

So while Manderlay may not be quite on par with Dogville simply because everything about the first film was so fresh and inspiring, it’s certainly a worthy second chapter and easily one of the best films of 2005.

Reviewed by Jessica Cogan

The President’s Last Bang is a dark, hyper-violent comedy about the events leading up to and immediately following the assassination of South Korean leader Park Chung-hee in 1979. The film offers its own humorous conjectures about the human frailties and aspirations that culminated in the head of the KCIA (Korea’s Intelligence Agency) shooting the president.

The President’s inner circle is filled with apoplectic and divisive characters, distrustful of one another, and for good reason. The President is oblivious, consumed instead with his own loneliness and whichever young girls are brought around to entertain him. In fact, it’s during an evening of just such amusement that the bloody rampage takes place. And we’re privy to every resounding shot and gurgling corpse.

The film lags a bit post-assassination as the members of the government scurry to resuscitate, cover up, investigate and avenge. But the final tally of which punishment is doled out to which perpetrator is an interesting closer. The President’s Last Bang is a bloody dark comedy that finally works – as long as you’re not squeamish or a historical purist.

Reviewed by Jessica Cogan

Every festival has its darling and from Sundance to Toronto, Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical The Squid and the Whale has been it. Characterized as an honest and funny look at a family coming apart in 1980s Brooklyn, The Squid and The Whale treads the quirky indie turf that Wes Anderson has made the style-du-jour.

The film follows the story of the Berkman family as mom Joan (Laura Linney) and dad Bernard (Jeff Daniels) split up. Both intellectuals, Joan and Bernard are on opposite ends of the success spectrum – Bernard’s best days are behind him and Joan just got published in The New Yorker. Their sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline), have some trouble navigating the divorce, and while Walt decides to become a mini-Bernard, mimicking his father’s beliefs, ideas and academic opinions, Frank – what is he, 10? – hits the bottle. And starts masturbating with abandon.

The characters are across-the-board quirky. Joan is uncomfortably honest. Bernard is an absolute study in narcissism and self-absorption. Walt is an intellectual poseur. Frank -- superficially pretty well adjusted – has major problems just beneath the surface. In Wes Anderson’s films, quirky characters and odd plots are tempered by some real lovability – see Gene Hackman’s Royal in The Royal Tenenbaums. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find the heart in The Squid and The Whale. So instead, we’re left with a pack of arrogant oddballs doing nasty things. Sure, it’s often quite funny – and Daniels is brilliant as Bernard – but finally, The Squid and the Whale boils down to brainiacs behaving badly.

Sokurov’s films (Mother and Son, Russian Ark) are famously gorgeous, and his latest, The Sun, is no exception. The rich, dark film follows Emperor Hirohito in the final days before the Japanese surrender to American forces. Perhaps surprisingly, those days are largely filled with puttering around his compound, dabbling in marine biology and navigating his obsequious servants as he eats and dresses. Issey Igata plays an understated and moving Hirohito, a sympathetic figure unequal to his role in history.

Sokurov’s Hirohito seems trapped by his position as both emperor and divinity. He’s more interested in intellectual pursuits -- poetry, history, biology – than in leading his country in wartime. Sadly, his people require more, and the cost of his hesitation and ineptitude is seen in sweeping shots of a post-apocalyptic Japanese landscape.

Sokurov’s film is quiet and thoughtful. The only false note comes in the cartoonish depictions of General MacArthur (Robert Dawson) and American GIs who have the annoying propensity for shouting “Americanisms” such as “yada, yada, yada!” and “baloney!” Still, The Sun can be counted another Sokurov success.

Three Times is a collection of three love stories, set during three different time periods, portrayed by the same two actors. Sounds intriguing, right? Sadly, the idea is better than the execution.

The first story, “A Time for Love,” is set in a 1966 pool hall. May (Shu Qi) works the pool hall where Chen (Chang Chen) is a regular. After a brief meeting, similarly brief letters sustain Chen through a military stint. On his return, he sets out to find May, who has changed jobs in the meantime. The story is gentle and sweet but excruciatingly slow.

Story number two, done as a silent film, is the picture’s best. “A Time for Freedom” is set in a 1911 brothel, and Qi plays a beautiful concubine whose unspoken love for Mr. Chang (Chen) throws her own position in the world into tragic relief. The deliberate pace, beautiful shots, setting and costuming in addition to stellar performances by Qi and Chen make this a riveting piece of film.

Finally, in “A Time for Youth,” we move to present-day Taipei where a fairly hateful Jing (Qi) and Zhen (Chen) live artistic, avant-garde existences mostly involving bad techno music, extremely close-up photography and cheating on their partners. May seems almost as stuck here as she was in the 1911 brothel, but this time her trappings are her own whims and youthful narcissism.

The film as a whole is inconsistent. While Qi and Chen are strong in their various roles, the pacing is often painfully slow and the stories too often less than compelling.

Reviewed by Jessica Cogan

Michael Winterbottom’s “adaptation” of Laurence Sterne’s 18th century novel is one of the gems of this year’s film festival. Tristram Shandy is – sort of – a film version of an unfilmable novel. Why unfilmable? The novel is an attempt by Tristram Shandy to tell his life story – but because he’s lured into side stories and digressions, his memoir ends before he’s even born.

The film Tristram Shandy takes us behind the scenes of movie making – into the insecurities and rivalries of its actors, the tensions of work vs. family, the struggle to get funding while staying true to the writing. And it does so both hilariously and with heart. Sure, Winterbottom pokes fun at the foibles of those in the industry, but he never does so cruelly. He’s aided in the endeavor by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s perfect comedic interplay. The two improvised much of their nscreen time together, and the outcome is as funny as it is natural.

Coogan and Brydon are supported by an equally talented cast. Kelly Macdonald is lovely as Jenny, Coogan’s wife and the mother of his new baby, and Naomie Harris is spot on as the over-educated production assistant. Faces from British films past abound in the film – Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility; Jude from Bridget Jones’s Diary, Stephen Fry from Peter’s Friends. Together they make an impressive ensemble in a quirky, clever film that shouldn’t be missed.

Who’s Camus Anyway

A Tale of Two Cinemas:
Who’s Camus Anyway and A Tale of Cinema
43rd Annual New York Film Festival 2005

Reviewed by Evan Sung

Two entries from the Far East screen at this year’s New York Film Festival, and though both tread the fuzzy line between reality and cinema, they couldn’t be more different.

Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Who’s Camus Anyway? is a compulsively entertaining film; funny, intelligent, and even a bit troubling by the end. The film tells the story of a group of college students who have one week to prepare and film their first movie “The Bored Murderer.” They work under the faculty supervision of the aging, inscrutable Professor Nakajo, a former director whose heyday has long passed. The young director Matsukawa (Shuji Kashiwabara) struggles to balance the pressures of filmmaking with the suffocating attentions of his girlfriend Yukari and his need to bed almost every female member of his crew. Along the way, attraction and repulsion spread like a contagion among the others. Questions of reality and fiction are also brought into play as the cast and crew get deeper and deeper into the world of cinema and the murder at the center of their film.

The young characters in Yanigamachi’s film are a screwball amalgam of Fame rejects and every college/high school movie kid since The Breakfast Club. The way they play off of and ricochet off of one another is a light and airy pleasure, and Yanigamachi directs a fluid camera to reflect the pinballing exchanges among the principals. Sly references to virtually the whole history of cinema are buried throughout. Eventually, the star of the student film, Ikeda, takes a disturbing turn into what may or may not be unscripted madness. Riffing off of Camus’ The Stranger in the impassivity of the student/murderer, the film leaves the audience wondering about the cumulative effect of what seems like the harmless diversion of pop culture.

Hang Songsoo’s A Tale of Cinema is as plodding and morose as Yanagimachi’s film is ebullient. The film opens with a shiftless and indecisive young man who reunites with an ex-girlfriend. They wander the streets of Seoul together one night, and after some impotent sex, decide that they want to commit suicide together. Along the way, a great deal of bickering and whining and crying punctuate the “action,” such as it is. Eventually, we realize that the story we have been watching was just a film, and our real protagonist, Tongsu, walks out of the theater. Tongsu, himself a filmmaker, runs into a familiar woman, only to realize that she is the actress from the film he has just stepped out of.

In spending some time with the young actress, Yongsil, their actions and activities begin to echo the fiction they have both collaborated in, he as the viewer, she as the actress. They have sex, successfully at least, and death and suicide are discussed a lot. Like the kids in Who’s Camus Anyway, the fiction of the cinema world infects and confuses the reality of the “real world.” But here, Songsoo approaches everything with such gravity and earnestness that eventually you wish they would just kill themselves and escape the existential muck that they are forced to wallow in.

Any movie lover knows that we inevitably view our lives through the filter of cinema, our favorite films, actors, scenes. Movies are made for this. Both of the films reviewed here suggest that this kind of permeability approaches a kind of madness that resides in all of us. But if we’re all going crazy anyway, I’d rather have fun getting there.