MONDAY
Insomnia (2002)
Dir: Christopher Nolan
Format: Blu-Ray
I bought this blu-ray this summer because it came with a free coupon to see Inception. I'd already seen Inception, really enjoyed it, but didn't love it (same with Dark Knight) (loved The Prestige, however), and was feeling a little out of sorts with all the love that was being heaped on it by the critics and masses (same as Dark Knight), so, with my wife out of town (she will NEVER see a movie twice in the theatres), I planned on giving it a second shot so that I could a.) jump on the bandwagon with everyone else, or, b.) clarify exactly what it was that was keeping me from loving it. Well, I opened the blu-ray and saw that the coupon to see Inception had expired two days earlier. So I didn't see inception that 2nd time. Still haven't. So I put Insomnia on my shelf and figured I'd get around to it at some point.
I wasn't too terribly disappointed. Chritopher Nolan is an always fascinating pop filmmaker, and the disc had an extra on it that kind of blew mind (commentary with the film recut in the order they shot it). So that was cool.
I remember when Insomnia came out we young film geeks were all abuzz with the fact that that Memento guy had a new film coming out. I also remember a kind across the board disappointment with it. It came, we saw it, we were underwhelmed. I'm not sure what we were all expecting. Something that used the language of film to tell it's story in a revolutionary, entirely new way, but this time with a much bigger budget, I guess.
I mean, that was kind of a glory period for young exciting filmmakers, and in general, sophomore efforts were at least as exciting as the filmmakers' first hits. Rushmore, Adaptation, Boogie Nights or Magnolia (depending whether or not you count Hard Eight as Anderson's grand introduction to the geek community), Flirting With Disaster or Three Kings (ditto Russel and Spanking the Monkey), etc. But with Insomnia, we were all kind of like, "Wow. Okay. That was... a film. With Al Pacino. And Robin Williams. And that chick who played a boy. And there's a murderer. And they have to catch him. And... yeah. A film." It wasn't like it was bad. It wasn't like we hated it. It just didn't feel like the work of an auteur (which, considering it's Nolan's only film without a Nolan screenplay credit, is hardly surprising.
So I was kind of excited when I popped it in my super slow, bargain price Magnavox Blu-Ray player this week. I was interested in seeing how the movie held up without the burden of being "The Follow-up to Memento".
Well, it was about as good as I remember it being. It still feels very much like an top-shelf procedural, the acting is decent to very good, Robin Williams is restrained (maybe too restrained?), and I still can't figure out any thematic connection between the title malady and either of the major plot lines.
However, I enjoyed it much more than I did the last time I watched it. Part of that may be that I'm less of a snob than I was in my earlier years, and so I'm able to enjoy a meat and potatoes generic adult drama a little more now. However, the great success I think Nolan had in this film (with no little help from Pacino) was in effectively portraying the downward spiral into deep, true, insomnia, Indeed, a part of me wonders if the whole film was nothing more than an excuse to explore the inability to sleep. That maybe the entire plot was just something to hang on that insomnia peg. The sleeping disorder cousin of The Other Sister. Regardless, the portrayal of Pacino's decent is hugely visceral. The light seeping around the edges of the windows, the movement to the foreground of background sounds - I began to experience that sort of nasty dry swallow that comes from staying up to late while I was watching. And it's really for that reason that I rate this film as highly as I do, because aside from the insomnia, it's really pretty average; an excuse for Nolan to figure out exactly what he can do with a studio budget; a test run for what was to become a record setting career.
C+
TUESDAY
The Pink Panther (1963)
Dir: Blake Edwards
Format: Netflix Instant
I won't have quite as much to say in general as I did about Insomnia. With this, my wife and I had just finished watching The Office on Netflix Instant, and rather than turn my TV off, and scanned through my queue, saw The Pink Panther, and clicked it on a whim. My wife was complaining about how she used to had the Pink Panther movies as a child. I was like "Yeah, but this one's different." I hadn't seen in since high school, where I saw the who Edwards/Sellers series essentially backwards. And, unlike my wife, I love those. However, when I finally got around to the first one, I remember being hugely disappointed. It was so slow. And Clouseau wasn't even the main characters for crap sakes. But I'd been wanting to give it another chance. I have a theory (that will pop up often on this blog) that you really don't see the film that the director intended until you see it a second time. Unless you are seeing a truly independent film with no one invloved that you've ever heard of, it's almost impossible not to be affected by the comparison of what the film is and what you expected it to be.
I digress.
We began to watch the Pink Panther, sure that it was just something we'd turn off at some point, and (maybe) finish later. But we just kept watching. And we really didn't even laugh until a full 30 minutes into the film. It's an odd, odd film, a fairly straight 60's master thief yarn, with one peripheral character who apparently walked in from a Laurel and Hardy movie. It's beautiful, stylish, lavishly photographed, and then Peter Sellers steps on a violin. And it's like this for the first our of the film. And then something weirder happens: almost all of our main characters end up in Clouseau's room, and seem to be infected by him. And they all get silly.
It's by no means a perfect film, it's really very very silly at times during its last act, and I'm not sure if silly works as well for Niven and the others as it does for Sellers, but its devil-may-care attitude regarding tone (especially in the first act), makes it very endearing to me. I plan on revisiting the other Edwards/Sellers Panther movies movies in the near future, and while I'm sure they will make laugh far more than this one did, I won't be surprised if this one ends up being the one I'm most fond of when it's all said and done.
B+
FRIDAY
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)
Dir: David Yates
Format: Theatre
Wow. That was one really weird film. And I absolutely loved it.
I know there's been some Potter die-hards at at the release of each film complaining about how it should have been longer, and, as far as I'm concerned, HP7.1 is a huge makes their argument seem very valid.
I love the books, love them, think they'll be remembered in 50 years in the same breath with Chronicles of Narnia. However, I've also been very happy with the movies as they've been. In fact, with the exception of Half-Blood Prince, I've considered each movie superior to the one before it. Sure there were lots of cuts made, but for the most part, I felt the producers and directors had a really good grasp on what it would take to make them into grand, rip-roaring movies.
But this one, man. It makes me wish each movie were 5 hours long. All of a sudden, it's all about the characters. And the relationship. And the moments. Ah, the moments. HP7.1 is all about the moments. Somewhere, in a little editing room in Hollywood, Yates said to his editor, "It's alright, you have five hours, let the movie breathe."
And breathe it did. HP7.1 is simultaneously a lavish, sweeping, slow-moving, Lean-esque epic, as well as navel-gazing indie movie, content with watching it's characters stand around thinking and reacting to what's going on around them. If you were to hear either one of these ways of describing the movie, one word that might pop to mind is: Slow. And it is. It can be a very slow movie. But it's a very slow movie peppered with Voldemort, multiple Potters, crazy half-naked demon Hermione, the single most affecting CGI character death in cinema history, and all of these moments mean so much more when the anguish and the confusion and the waiting (the by-God waiting) has been been lived in real-time by us and the characters. Instead of being told about the passage of time (as has happened in previous films), we actually get to live it with the characters in HP7.1, and therefore the emotional payoffs feels that much more genuine and earned.
I won't really blame people if they decide that this movie is too slow or boring for them. They are, after all, creatures of their time and place, but as for me, I am deeply in love with crazy, audacious, movie. It's not perfect (Harry falling out of the side car and running on the roof of the bus? What?), but it's close. This one's sitting pretty as a prime candidate for my favorite movie of the year.
A
