Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Dangerous lives of altar boys
Directed by Peter Care
Dangerous lives of altar boys is a growth stunted film like the adolescent theme it tries to portray.
Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin) and Francis Doyle (Emile Hirsch) are best friends and pranksters during the 70’s in a catholic school, St Agatha. Doyle is fascinated with drawing comics while Tim is looking for the next trick to play on the strict school mistress, Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). After their zoo trip, he thought of a plan to catch the cougar and released it in Assumpta’s living quarters. Meanwhile, Doyle is infatuated with schoolmate, Margie Flynn (Jena Malone) who has a shadowy past that becomes a secret too heavy for him to carry.
Peter Care’s directing is haphazard at best as it unfurls itself with the subplot animation of the atomic trinity story which Doyle was drawing. The cartoon, which is a parallel metaphor to the boy’s quest for “salvation” instead of enhancing the movie, appears to be a juvenile stylistic attempt to capture the idleness and anger of youth hood.
The characters are underdeveloped. Tim is always getting into trouble but we are not given a glimpse of his emotions excpet during one rare instance when he picked up a dead stray on the road. Doyle might look the part of a brooding teenager who is struggling to keep up with Tim’s antics and dating the girl he likes but he comes across more across as bland.
Overall speaking, bad teenage flicks makes you wish you never had to go through adolescence again. Dangerous lives does not belong to that category. Rather, its insipid and almost boring to even remind you of what it is all about.
The Soft Skin (La Peau douce)
Directed by Francois Truffaut
The Soft Skin reveals Truffaut’s admiration for Hitchcock with its close up shots that calls attention to details such as turning the ignition key of a car engine or the faces of its characters. The soundtrack is equally Hitchcockian and right down to the details. In fact, one can easily liken The Soft Skin to a drama genre of classic Hitchcock.
The story of literary critic Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) who meets young, pretty air stewardess, Nicole Chomette (Françoise Dorléac) spelling the beginning of a torrid adulterous affair would be the template for Truffaut’s later dramatic film, The Woman Next Door, in which it could only be solved by a death.
While the soft skin might not be considered one of Truffaut’s greatest work, it is nevertheless meticulously directed with a strong causality. One of the more exciting sequence where Pierre is held off by his agent while Nicole follows behind is filmed and edited with a paced, conscious rhythm that recalls the detective genre.
Hour of the wolf
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Hour of the wolf refers to the time of the night where most people die and kids are born. The protagonist is Max Von Sydow as artist, Johan Borg, who lives in an isolated island with her wife,
Alma Borg (Liv Ulmann), the narrator of the story.
Alma begins by telling us their life on the island. During the days, Johan is out to work as an artiste, painting on his canvas. Things turn eerie when the rich landowner, Baron von Meerkens, invited them for dinner. Alma would find out that Johan is also plauged by nightmares of a former lover, Veronica Vogler.
Hour of the wolf brings to mind Roman Polanski’s psychological horror, Rosemary’s Baby; where weird neighbours are the source of one’s terror. Bergman experiments technically in this picture with “rotational” shot of the dinner scene; uncanny close ups of the neighbours while they were hounding Johan; and other trickery including one of the neighbours climbing up the wall and roof. In another sequence, where Johan kills a young boy at the rocks while he is fishing, the director speeds up certain parts heightening the tension. Lars Johan Werle’s music adds an extra touch to complementing the black and white photography of Sven Nykvist; who knows when to “brighten” faces or portray them in the dark. It is these multiple factors of screen composition, movement, sound and lighting that makes Hour of the wolf, instantly memorable, as a horror classic.
One could of course cringe at the special effects of Evald Andersson such as the old woman’s removal of her skin and eyeballs as overtly gross.
The Devil Probably
Directed by Robert Bresson
Bresson remains one of those intellectual directors whom critics likes and the public probably shuns because of its high handed message. The devil probably features one of the worst directed film as the actors performance are stripped of the core of emotional realism that plagues modern cinema. It is probably Bresson’s idea to hypothesize that actors are merely agents of a story plot which explains why they always seem to be carriers of Bresson’s message – namely that human’s act of pollution would be the destruction of mother earth.
Even when Bresson builds up a romance subplot between Charles, the agonizing “conscious” youth, who is torn apart by two women, of whom he could not seem to decide who to love and be with, they seem to lack the passion of love. The women would devise strategies to keep Charles with them; discuss among themselves and refuse Charles to join in – but all seems like ploys rather than a genuinely being in love.
By showing documentary footages of pollution narrated with a precise morose news speaking male voice, Bresson adds the final touch to creating a film that distances its audience away the humdrum of the characters.
The Devil probably is bad acting and bad direction in the conventional sense of the average filmgoer but it is also this very trait that makes him one of the most important directors of the cinema. One could see his influence on the later Godard.
The morality behind The Devil probably is that there is no morality. Choosing to be an activist or rejecting productive contribution to society are choices. Choosing to love and live or death are again merely choices.
Directed by Peter Care
Dangerous lives of altar boys is a growth stunted film like the adolescent theme it tries to portray.
Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin) and Francis Doyle (Emile Hirsch) are best friends and pranksters during the 70’s in a catholic school, St Agatha. Doyle is fascinated with drawing comics while Tim is looking for the next trick to play on the strict school mistress, Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). After their zoo trip, he thought of a plan to catch the cougar and released it in Assumpta’s living quarters. Meanwhile, Doyle is infatuated with schoolmate, Margie Flynn (Jena Malone) who has a shadowy past that becomes a secret too heavy for him to carry.
Peter Care’s directing is haphazard at best as it unfurls itself with the subplot animation of the atomic trinity story which Doyle was drawing. The cartoon, which is a parallel metaphor to the boy’s quest for “salvation” instead of enhancing the movie, appears to be a juvenile stylistic attempt to capture the idleness and anger of youth hood.
The characters are underdeveloped. Tim is always getting into trouble but we are not given a glimpse of his emotions excpet during one rare instance when he picked up a dead stray on the road. Doyle might look the part of a brooding teenager who is struggling to keep up with Tim’s antics and dating the girl he likes but he comes across more across as bland.
Overall speaking, bad teenage flicks makes you wish you never had to go through adolescence again. Dangerous lives does not belong to that category. Rather, its insipid and almost boring to even remind you of what it is all about.
The Soft Skin (La Peau douce)
Directed by Francois Truffaut
The Soft Skin reveals Truffaut’s admiration for Hitchcock with its close up shots that calls attention to details such as turning the ignition key of a car engine or the faces of its characters. The soundtrack is equally Hitchcockian and right down to the details. In fact, one can easily liken The Soft Skin to a drama genre of classic Hitchcock.
The story of literary critic Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) who meets young, pretty air stewardess, Nicole Chomette (Françoise Dorléac) spelling the beginning of a torrid adulterous affair would be the template for Truffaut’s later dramatic film, The Woman Next Door, in which it could only be solved by a death.
While the soft skin might not be considered one of Truffaut’s greatest work, it is nevertheless meticulously directed with a strong causality. One of the more exciting sequence where Pierre is held off by his agent while Nicole follows behind is filmed and edited with a paced, conscious rhythm that recalls the detective genre.
Hour of the wolf
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Hour of the wolf refers to the time of the night where most people die and kids are born. The protagonist is Max Von Sydow as artist, Johan Borg, who lives in an isolated island with her wife,
Alma Borg (Liv Ulmann), the narrator of the story.
Alma begins by telling us their life on the island. During the days, Johan is out to work as an artiste, painting on his canvas. Things turn eerie when the rich landowner, Baron von Meerkens, invited them for dinner. Alma would find out that Johan is also plauged by nightmares of a former lover, Veronica Vogler.
Hour of the wolf brings to mind Roman Polanski’s psychological horror, Rosemary’s Baby; where weird neighbours are the source of one’s terror. Bergman experiments technically in this picture with “rotational” shot of the dinner scene; uncanny close ups of the neighbours while they were hounding Johan; and other trickery including one of the neighbours climbing up the wall and roof. In another sequence, where Johan kills a young boy at the rocks while he is fishing, the director speeds up certain parts heightening the tension. Lars Johan Werle’s music adds an extra touch to complementing the black and white photography of Sven Nykvist; who knows when to “brighten” faces or portray them in the dark. It is these multiple factors of screen composition, movement, sound and lighting that makes Hour of the wolf, instantly memorable, as a horror classic.
One could of course cringe at the special effects of Evald Andersson such as the old woman’s removal of her skin and eyeballs as overtly gross.
The Devil Probably
Directed by Robert Bresson
Bresson remains one of those intellectual directors whom critics likes and the public probably shuns because of its high handed message. The devil probably features one of the worst directed film as the actors performance are stripped of the core of emotional realism that plagues modern cinema. It is probably Bresson’s idea to hypothesize that actors are merely agents of a story plot which explains why they always seem to be carriers of Bresson’s message – namely that human’s act of pollution would be the destruction of mother earth.
Even when Bresson builds up a romance subplot between Charles, the agonizing “conscious” youth, who is torn apart by two women, of whom he could not seem to decide who to love and be with, they seem to lack the passion of love. The women would devise strategies to keep Charles with them; discuss among themselves and refuse Charles to join in – but all seems like ploys rather than a genuinely being in love.
By showing documentary footages of pollution narrated with a precise morose news speaking male voice, Bresson adds the final touch to creating a film that distances its audience away the humdrum of the characters.
The Devil probably is bad acting and bad direction in the conventional sense of the average filmgoer but it is also this very trait that makes him one of the most important directors of the cinema. One could see his influence on the later Godard.
The morality behind The Devil probably is that there is no morality. Choosing to be an activist or rejecting productive contribution to society are choices. Choosing to love and live or death are again merely choices.
