Four More Festival Reviews
October 3rd, 2007
I took a break from the festival today to catch up with reviews. Here’s a quick rundown:
I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’s Dylan picture only truly takes off when a Dylan song is playing, and that should tell you something. Cate Blanchett is great fun, but I liked her even better in tonight’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. More on that soon — and I’ve got video of the press conference with Haynes, too.
Paranoid Park
I saw this strictly out of professional curiosity, and Gus van Sant did not disappoint: yet another artful bore.
The Man From London
Everybody seems to be digging out their favorite “on drugs” lines for this year’s NYFF, so here goes: The Third Man on Ambien.
Secret Sunshine
Once again, my festival favorite (at least so far) comes from South Korea. No distributor yet, but you can get Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis and Peppermint Candy on DVD.
I’m Not There. Todd Haynes, 2007. ***
Paranoid Park. Gus van Sant, 2007. *
The Man From London. Béla Tarr, 2007. ***
Milyang. Lee Chang-dong, 2007. *****
The Beach
August 1st, 2007
At a screening for Sunshine last month, Danny Boyle confessed that he felt directing romance was not his strength. After seeing his late-nineties bestseller adaptation The Beach, it’s easy to conclude that he’s on to something with that self-assessment. How else do you explain that when Leonardo DiCaprio and Virginie Ledoyen are having edenic sex on a remote Thai island, the most memorable thing about it is the Moby soundtrack?
In all fairness, Alex Garland’s tale of a utopian beach community run by an overprotective Tilda Swinton was hokum to begin with. At the time The Beach came out, I was living in my own tropical paradise of sorts, and like most things, it’s neither that good nor that bad. The Beach oversells its utopia at first, just to turn around and sell it out for the thriller finish, when sharks and evil pot farmers create trouble in paradise. But what kind of utopia doesn’t have a library or a movie theater, anyway?
The Beach. Danny Boyle, 2000. **
