3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977, USA)

Ben Livant:

As you handed me this film you said it was Altman's Persona. A couple days before watching it, I brought up the topic of Mulholland Drive. Quite a coincidence. If 3 Women (1977) is a child of that Bergman picture - and even the most basic DNA testing establishes this patrimony - it just as clearly is a parent of the Lynch picture. This retrospective specific connection aside, 3W is certainly Lynch-like in general. Eraserhead came out the same year. Before 3W?[ed. note: the films were released within one month of each other, so it is likely they were filmed at the same time. Something in the water?]  If so, maybe it was an example for Altman of just how bad-dream a movie can be.

Just so happens I flashed on another film from '77 while watching this one, Herzog's Stroszek. The whole hick, dusty American dream gone bad in a decidedly demented bad-dream way; the West gone to seed and people sort of shape-shifting into increasingly vacant versions of each other. The angel of death descends upon Stroszek in the final act and it shows up at the close of 3W too.

Not a big surprise. A foreboding darkness attends 3W from the start.  The character who dies in the end may inspire speculations on why, for those wanting to extract from the film's identity-morphing some feminist line of thought. I can not even begin to attempt this. The whole thing is for me a tepid nightmare, gives us chilly shivers in warm water.

From the dangerous swimming pools at work and the apartment block, to the rhubarb-rhubarb hateful murmuring of the patronizing social environs, and the horrid recipes for plastic food, the burnt-out amusement park as a gathering place for emotional ghosts... and of course, the unspoken ominous undertow of the third woman, who eventually surfaces to leave us with an even weirder tripartite revolving doppelgänger hen house. 3W is a daytime horror movie.

Why did Altman cast Spacek? Because she has just done Carrie the year before. Why did Kubrick cast Duvall in The Shining. Because she had previously been in 3W. It's a horror movie, I say. You can intellectualize subconscious surrealism, blah blah blah, or interpret recurring images in terms of some sort of symbolism, yadda yadda, or regard the incoherence of the events as a metaphor for existential alienation, whatever.  Were you or were you not creeped out watching this film?  I sure was. It's spooky business with no direction home.  Remarkably affecting.

Without ever addressing the issue of insanity, even implicitly, the film is seriously disturbing because it provides no basis for us to determine what constitutes mental stability. Buddhism says the ego, the self, personal identity, call it what you will, Buddhism says it is an illusion. If so, it is a necessary illusion.  For sanity!  And the more disillusioned we are made by 3W, the more frightening it is.  With the sun out.

Doesn't even begin to touch the profound depths of Persona. Much deeper than the flashy surfaces of Mulholland Drive. On par and would make a good double-bill with Kieslowski's Double Life of Veronique; that being the Eros-moist half of the screening, 3W being the Thanatos-dripping compliment. An unsettling, off-kilter mood piece of doom, 3W is hard to like but impossible to forget.


Dan Jardine:

Other than stepping in to come to the defense of my much-beloved Mulholland Dr. (back off, mister) I don't have much to add to this other than: Pretty much!  Just as MD dwells in the disturbed recesses of the damaged psyche of an aspiring starlet in order to address the corrosive role played by the Hollywood dream factory on said dreamers, 3M, while relocating to the American heartland, takes a similar tack, dropping us in the nightmare reality of its similarly unhinged protagonist in order to question...what, exactly? This is the almighty question. The film insinuates itself into your skull, and earwig-like proceeds to consume all you thought you knew of ontological security. 

Weird. Trippy. Horrific. Befuddling. Maddening. Almost certainly great. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: 3 Women

The Hunt (Denmark, 2012, Thomas Vinterberg)

Ben Livant:


As we all know, the difference between the great play and all the not-so-great plays is that the former has a second act at least as good if not better than its first act.  The second act of The Hunt (2012) is not at least as good as the first.  It's better.  The Hunt is a great play. 

The first act is almost unbearable to watch.  The increasing intensity of the injustice reaches a degree of severity that began to affect me physically.  I honestly was not confident that I would be able to stick it out.  To what extent is the life of an innocent man going to be destroyed?  Getting sent to jail starts to look like the best possible option as his whole social world turns against him.  Soon enough it is probable enough that he will kill himself out of despair, as the Scandinavian-style Shirley Jackson story keeps contracting the black hole around him. 

Yet, as certain as we are about the protagonist with respect to the first, single accusation against him, as the reports circulate that there have been other violations in the nursery school, we have to wonder if there is anything factual to them.  Have we been sucker-punched by the narrative?  No.  That we can have any second thoughts about the man is not a sucker-punch but a direct blow.  At us.  To even  entertain the idea that he might be what just about everyone is convinced his is, this is to take a sip of the Jim Jones group-think Kool-aid that has poisoned the town's well. 

At the same time, I believe it is reasonable to grasp at the possibility that he might be guilty.  What a relief it would be if he was!  Please open the escape hatch from this room in which there is almost no ethical air and the walls of  untruth keep pressing inward to crush a decent man to death and us along with him. But no, there is very little to make us abandon our sympathy with him and the suffering just gets worse. 

This tremendous weight bearing down is progressively lifted in the second act.   Exactly what we were praying for in the first act is delivered to us in increments.  The solitary dignity that has just managed  to sustain him so far gains some desperately needed social assistance from his son and his son's godfather who never abandoned him.  He is released from custody because the police determine that the charges against him have been fabricated.  Finally, his best friend realizes the terrible wrong that has been committed.  As this accumulates positively, so does our hope that - ohmigod! - are we actually going to make it out of this movie with a happy ending?  Jesus, I didn't think I was going to get out alive at all. The conclusion of the film pours battery acid in the wound.  Turns out the sucker-punch comes in the second act.  What fools we were to believe that everyone could just let bygones be bygones.  That the water supply of the town would be pure ever after.  That the poison everyone drank wasn't still pumping in their blood and would do so forever more.  And the same thing only inverted for the protagonist, how in hell can he continue to be a member of that club that will have him again?  Forgive and forget?  Forget it!  The entire community - including the virtuous survivor of the collective torture season - is saturated in sin.  Jacob referenced Haneke's The White Ribbon.

 The performance by the lead actor is the sort for which an award should be awarded.  All the acting is very fine - especially from the little girl, wow! - working off a script that is excellent for its lean brutality.  The only other Vinterberg I have seen is The Celebration (1998), which has its strengths but overindulges itself dramatically to the point of grotesque caricature that borders on baroque excess.  The Hunt employs stylistic gestures at moments - particularly in the final scene, allowing the conclusion to resonate with serious metaphoric depth - but it is otherwise a film of austere naturalistic rigor. 

This is in the service of the terrible realism of the premise and the plot.  It would be nice to believe that such a story could never happen in real life.  But just as there are true tragedies of children molested by perverts, there are true tragedies of adults' lives being ruined by some little kid's little lie.  The Hunt is a hard movie.  Really tough.  For as much as we like to think we would never drink from that cup, we would.  We most definitely would. 

Dan Jardine:

Like you, my only experience of Vinterberg before this was The Celebration, a film that I liked a little more than you (I mostly dug its mordant sense of humour and unexpected tonal shifts), but not nearly as much as I like The Hunt, which was the best film of this year's Victoria International Film Festival. 

You and Jacob quite appropriately reference Shirley Jackson and Haneke, I flash on Clouzot's Le Corbeau, but they are all of a piece. The citizenry in small communities turn in on themselves, devouring their own, all while firmly convinced that they are doing the right thing. Again, as you rightly discern, The Hunt tills fresh soil when it moves past this premise to take a cold, hard look at the effect that this feeding frenzy has on the entire community.  A child drops a bombshell that spirals into a sequence of mistakes and errors in judgment by the well-intentioned adults around her, and the subsequent revelation of a series of often unpleasant but honest truths about behaviours that suffer from the terrible affliction of being so recognizably and plausibly human mark much of what makes this film so fascinating, horrifying and ultimately great. Lucas, the poor protagonist (the brilliant Mads Mikkelson) is eventually confronted by a terrifying catch-22: if the girl sticks to her story, he is a dead man. If she recants, it is because she is ashamed. 

How would any of us survive? But survive Lucas does, refusing to let his accusers rest on their comfortable and holier-than-thou laurels. Rather than turn tail, he stands tall, taking their abuse, and returning it in kind. Lucas is particularly concerned with confronting Theo, his closest friend and father of Klara, the accuser (a remarkably naturalistic  Annike Wedderkopp.) Thomas Bo Larsen, who plays Theo, gives the third great performance in this film, conveying his character's agony and confusion with equal parts subtlety and skill.  The film's resolution appears to rest on the successful reclamation of this friendship, but then it takes one final left at Albuquerque. 

Thankfully, we are spared from the ultimate horror of the protagonist's crucifixion, and instead are led to an uneasy resolution. The townspeople allow the exile to return to the fold in a ceremonial celebration that is laden with the weight of communal guilt, anger, distrust and uncertainty, culminating in an unforgettably explosive and dreadful climax. 



Often painful but always riveting, The Hunt is a reason to celebrate, marking the convergence of startling talents and great vision. 
 

Ben Livant:

Perhaps the hardest thing to take is that the little girl does try to recant - more than once!  But everyone around her is unable and unwilling truly to listen to what she is saying.  When her father finally is able and willing, this is the necessary and sufficient condition for redemption all around... we let us ourselves have faith until the grim wake-up call from this false promise.

An essential strategy in the narrative is jumping over a year after we have just been promised that repair and restoration are going to advance.  When the film was done, I was shocked with myself that I was not shocked by the happy reconciliation just minutes before.  How could I have been so naive?   Well, a big part is just that basic need to have a horrible mistake rectified.  But this need is quite brilliantly encouraged in the film by what it does NOT show us over the course of the year prior to the final revelation.

The Hunt a tour de force of dramatic structure.

Dan Jardine:

No kidding. The film certainly crosses its thematic t's and dot's its narrative i's. And to really drive home the point of how we've been suckered into believing that all the necessary healing has been done, we are given that awkward scene of Lucas ferrying Karla across the tiled kitchen floor. We would understand if he called for Theo, or simply waved to her as he left the room, but Lucas has always comes to her rescue, and he does so once again. How could this not signal that it is safe to breathe, that the air has been pumped back into this town's lungs?  

Damn good ending. It reminds us that beneath the citizen's veneer of civility lurks a dark streak of fear and loathing that will require a helluva lot more than twelve months  to paper over. 

Five Stellar Poker Movies

Poker has exploded in popularity over the past decade, and movies have definitely played a part in catapulting these games of chance to the forefront of our leisure activities. Behold this list of stellar films that employ poker in a meaningful way, either to advance the plot and/or develop the characters therein.

The Cincinnati Kid  Set in 1930s New Orleans, this Norman Jewison-directed, Steve McQueen-starring pic centres on a young up-and-comer trying to beat the master, played by Edgar G. Robinson.  Think of this as a slighter version of The Hustler, but on a different sort of felt.

Rounders  Just when  you think you’re out, they pull you back in again. Matt Damon returns to the poker table to aid a friend in debt to dangerous people.  John Dahl’s film is not as sinister or complex as its cinematic cousin, House of Games, but it is fun to see these young Hollywood studs (Damon, Edward Norton, Gretchen Mol) strut their stuff. This is the film largely responsible for the recent explosion in the popularity of Texas Hold 'Em.

Croupier  Clive Owens’ breakthrough in the title role of this Mike Hodges thriller offers a glimpse into the life on the other side of the green felt. The Croupier dreams of using his work in his art (as a writer) but this leads to sometimes predictable (and other times far less so) complications.

House of Games  David Mamet’s sometimes baffling, never less than fascinating glimpse into the dark underbelly of this world where it turns out that winning games of chance involve more skill (and con artistry) than luck.

California Split  The Odd Couple of poker films. This typically narratively loose-limbed, character-driven film by Robert Altman features two unlikely partners in crime, Elliot Gould and George Segal, who end up on the wrong end of debts that necessitate a series of wacky adventures in pursuit of the big payoff in a Reno poker showdown.  

The Runners-up

Casino Royale (2006)

The Gambler (1974)

The Sting (1973)

Maverick (1994)

A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966)

High Roller: The Stu Unger Story (2003)

Gasland (USA, 2010, Josh Fox)

Ben Livant: 

I asked you to supply me with this doc because more than once over the last couple months Paul has been on me to see it.  He was right to do so.  It is indeed a must-see documentary.  After I get my kids to watch it and we return the disc to you, I will be on you to look at it yourself.

In the meantime, you are spared a review from me because this time out it suffices for me simply to agree with what some other reviewers have already said.  

From Wiki: Robert Koehler of Variety referred to it as "one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years… Gasland may become to the dangers of natural gas drilling what Silent Spring was to DDT.”

Eric Kohn of IndieWire wrote, "Gasland is the paragon of first person activist filmmaking done right… By grounding a massive environmental issue in its personal ramifications, [Josh] Fox turns Gasland into a remarkably urgent diary of national concerns."

Stewart Nusbaumer of the Huffington Post wrote "Gasland... just might take you from outrage right into the fire of action."

The Denton Record Chronicle said “Fox decides that his own backyard in Pennsylvania isn’t his exclusive property... Set to his own banjo music and clever footage, Gasland is both sad and scary... if your soul isn’t moved by the documentary, yours is a heart of shale."

Bloomberg News critic Dave Shiflett wrote that Fox "may go down in history as the Paul Revere of fracking."

After you have seen it, the short Wiki entry on the film is worth reading in full to learn how the gas capitalists have reacted; insisting the contamination is from biogenic gas unreleased by them rather than thermogenic gas released by them.  This is a lie.  But the gas coming out of the water tap is actually only the most visible problem.  All the fracking chemicals leached into the aquifer is the deeper, unseen, truly terrifying pollution.

  Here is the Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasland.

FIFTEEN FILMS OF PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE 

A Facebook exercise is now a blog post. The task: Think of 15 movies that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. These are the films that no matter what they were thought of critically, shaped your world. 

First up: The Films Chosen by Ben Livant

1. Emil and the Detectives (1964) - I saw this was I was five or maybe just four years old at the British Embassy in Warsaw.  It is the first film I remember.  And I use the word "remember" reservedly.  For many years, I did not know if I had watched a movie, had a dream or lived through some real life event.

2. Full Metal Jacket (1987) - Has the singular distinction of making me change my mind about a film like no other before or since.  Just loathed it as I walked out of the theatre, thought it was garbage.  But I couldn't stop thinking about it for weeks afterward.  Finally woke up one morning convinced it was truly brilliant.  I continue to be convinced.

3. The Red Balloon (1956) - Someone gave me the gift of showing this to me when I was still a child.  Years later as an adult, I could not refrain from finding certain faults in the film.  But when I first saw it, I was absolutely transported.  The poignant beauty of it - the Frenchness dripping everywhere like the music of Fauré I had heard my father play on the piano - sublime.

4. The Aristocats (1970) - I must have seen Mary Poppins, which I believe took my older brother's cinema cherry, but it must have gone in one eye and out the other.  This here feature length cartoon was definitely my first big toke off the Disney bong.  It was the entertainment before a birthday party.  Even though I knew there would be ice cream and cake at the house, I did not want to leave the theatre.

5. Planet of the Apes (1968) - I will be surprised if somebody else has an entry like this; that is, for a film I didn't even see!  Well, I saw it years later on TV.  But back in the day, my brother saw it, came home and told me all about it.  Of course, this is just as much a testament to his storytelling prowess, (and the original novel?)  The sucker-punch ending landed squarely on my jaw.  And the conceptual force of the post-apocalyptic Earth hurt my head.

6. St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) - My first exposure to graphic violence.  Meant to be shocking, the depiction certainly shocked me.  Was upset enough at bedtime to need a parent to soothe my nerves.  Or was that after my brother talked me through "The Planet of the Apes?"  Naw, it was definitely the mobster gore.

7. Natalie Wood (1938-1981) -  No, she is not a movie.  But she was a movie star.  My first.  I associate my earliest proto-sexual feelings with the sound of Diana Ross' voice.  Sorta knocked my knees together.  Looking at Natalie Wood's face a few years later, the sensation started to travel above my knees.

8. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - If a better buddy movie has ever been made, I have yet to see it.  Only years later did I come to realize that the first time I watched these two men together, I wanted to fuck both of them.  I have watched them together in this movie many more times over the years and every time I do, I still want to fuck both of them.  And I'm into Natalie Wood!

9. Alphaville (1965) - Not yet adolescent, at least I was pubescent.  But I still didn't have a clue.  It was "Emil and the Detectives" all over again, but on drugs this time; some sort of black and white hallucinogen.  Clearly, I got caught in the crossfire of Noir for nice kids and Noir for radical beatniks.

10. The Incident (1967) - More or less a stage play of character-driven, high-stakes drama, the NYC verisimilitude gets right up in your face.  Watching this on late-night TV, growing up in Regina but regularly going to NYC to visit all my relatives, this movie actually cashed the cheque that all those weekly episodes of Kojak wrote in bogus ink.

11. The Godfather I & II (1972/1974) - I take this to be one whole experience.  It is impossible to overestimate the degree to which this film conditioned my adolescent attitude about masculinity.  Simply put, I wanted to be these guys.  Jesus help me, I still do.  But I'm trying to evolve.

12. Apocalypse Now (1979) - This is the film that made me stop eating popcorn while watching movies forever after.  Saw it by myself in the theatre.  Just stayed in my seat for the next screening and stared at it again.  The usher appeared to know how I felt.

13. Three Brothers (1981) - The importance of this film for me is odd considering that I remember almost nothing about it. Yet, there is a scene close to the end, between a grandfather and a grandchild.  Like the rest of the film, I do not remember it as such.   All I know is it made me cry and I kept on crying even after the final credits had rolled and the house lights came on.

14. Cinema Paradiso (1988) - It's the music, the music, the music!

15. The Bicycle Thief (1948) - Wiki: "Four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by Sight & Sound."  Damn straight!  Absolutely goddamn right!!!

Next Up, Dan Jardine's Selections:

1.       Nosferatu (1922) Scared the bejezus outta me as a child. I don’t think I saw the whole film, probably because I was too bloody scared, but I do remember Shrenk’s rat teeth and skanky finger nails, and his chilling disappearance to the crowing of the cock at dawn.

2.       The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) I came to this one much later in life, but in many ways I am thankful for that. Most importantly, I got to see it projected in a theatre, rather than on a tv screen, and with the accompaniment of a live orchestra. A chilling, harrowing, mesmerizing piece; heartbreaking and horrifying. Falconetti!

3.       Freaks (1932) Right up there with Nosferatu in fear factor, Browning’s film haunted me for years after I saw it as a youngster on late night TV. Helped to establish horror films as an early genre favourite, both alluring and repulsive. “One of us! One of us!” No thank you, very much!

4.       It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)  The grey clouds lurking behind this American Christmas Carol’s silver lining have always been the big appeal of this film for me.  Jimmy Stewart’s dark night of the soul has always resonated, even if the tear-jerking happy ending softens the bleak subtext.

5.       The Third Man (1949) I watched this as a cynical teenager in a university theatre of like-minded, faux world-weary types, and immediately identified with its desperate post-war sadness and jaded, bleary European-ness. All this and Orson Welles too! Citizen Kane is the more important film, but The Third Man is the one that sticks with me to this day.

6.       Seven Samurai (1954) I saw this first in my twenties, and it set the bar for all action/adventure films I have seen since. Kurosawa understood how important it was to establish context and give us characters worth caring about before throwing them in harm’s way. So many directors think you need to trade this for memorable action sequences when Kurosawa proved that you can have your cake and eat it too.

7.       2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) The holy grail of my movie experiences. I may have seen other films in the theatre before this, but no memory of them remains, whereas Kubrick’s space opera, which blew my ten year-old mind back in the day, has taken up permanent residence in my subconscious. 2001 unclipped my skull cap, and washed my mind clean. The film redefined what movies could be (for me), and I would never look at them the same way again. The ultimate trip? No doubt.

8.       The Planet of the Apes (1968) The best Twilight Zone I never saw. I watched this film within months of seeing Kubrick’s opus, and it is a great credit to TPOTA that the film endures in my memory as a sort of intuitive counterpoint to the cagey and chilly hopefulness of 2001. TPOTA is one of cinema’s great fuck you’s to pompous humanity. As you may have guessed by now, I was a cynical little shit.

9.       Godfather 1 & 2 (1972/4) Coppola loomed large for me in the 70s—this list could easily include all four films he made this decade. As a young wannabe radical myself, I recognized a kindred spirit in FFC.  Add to this the exquisite attention to detail you sense in every frame as well as the career-defining performances by nearly every cast member, and you have pretty much everything you need to make a permanent impression on a young film buff.

10.   Network (1976) This film was (and is) right in my wheel house. In high school, I was (and to some extent remain to this day) a cynic in an idealist’s body who was really starting to get into films with a politically radical agenda, and Network fit the bill better than any film I had ever seen. Remains an eerily prescient masterpiece. Plus, I see your Natalie Wood and I raise you one crazy ass beautiful Faye Dunaway!

11.   Taxi Driver (1977) This is probably the most purely visceral experience I have ever had in the movie theatre.   Travis Bickle’s pathology mirrored society’s (New York’s, at the very least), and DeNiro’s performance—which remains his best—rubbed me raw. The best word I can use to describe my reaction is awestruck.

12.   Eraserhead (1977) I guess it should come as little surprise that the 70s was the formative decade for my cinematic consciousness, or that—given my childhood attraction to horror films—that David Lynch’s most personal and devastatingly surreal film should make my list. Having grown up in a household with two alcoholics, I was also a sucker for the film’s degenerate premise that parenthood is the ultimate horrorshow.

13.   Deer Hunter (1978) A huge piece of shit, or a brilliant slice of Americana? Why not both?  I recognized that the politics of the Vietnam-set scenes went against everything I believed (and continue to believe) in, but there is something undeniably potent at work in the rest of the film. One of the few films I re-visited in the theatres during its initial run, so powerful was its impact. I cannot look at the film today.

[The 25 year gap between films that appears now does not mean that I stopped watching or being impressed with movies.  There could be many reasons that there were not many films made in the intervening years that had a powerful enough personal impact to make this list, but mostly I suspect it was a function of age (mine, not he movie’s).  Simply put, I suspect that I was too old to be surprised/shocked/deeply affected by much, but not yet old enough to realize that great cinematic experiences need to be cherished.  And to be fair to myself, there are films on this list (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Seven Samurai, The Third Man) that I first watched during this apparently barren period. So there’s that as well.]

14.   Dogville (2003) One of the few times where I felt like the entire theatre was sharing a common experience.  As the credits rolled, nobody moved. Several minutes passed before people began to gather their belongings and head for the door. Von Trier is a provocateur, and his unique blending of Bertold Brecht and Thorton Wilder struck me as a singular masterpiece then (and to this day), a film that works on just about every level. Gobsmacked.

15.   Into the Wild (2007) Tough call for the last spot on this list. I could have gone with Before Sunrise/Sunset as well, as it expresses a similar simmering romanticism, but there is something about the Christopher McCandless story that hit me at a deeper, more personal level. I often dreamt of chucking it all, living by my wits, so I could easily identify with the protagonist. That he was also attractive, well-educated, intelligent and naively idealistic didn’t hurt either. A film that never, after over a dozen viewings, fails to move me to tears. 

Movie-Themed Slot Machines

Movie themed games have become more popular because whereas in the past the theme was just used loosely, borrowing images and characters, nowadays, the makers of the games are making deals with the movies so that they can use clips and apply the idea of the film much more effectively and make the whole experience much more enjoyable for gamers.

Braveheart was a massively successful and iconic movie, and the online slots version of it is dramatic and intense, with a real footage from the film being used as an intro. It's a 25 payline slot game with lots of winning combinations, and also extra features. One of these is the Kilt Lift feature where you have the opportunity to pick a kilt and reveal a prize. The graphics and sound effects are very impressive in this game and it ties in nicely with the film to make a great online casino experience.

King Kong is another great online slot game with fantastic graphics and opportunities to win. It has four bonus features, and two modes, Jungle and Big City mode which puts it in another category to most other online slots games. There are great clips to enjoy from the movie too so this game is also very interactive.

In the Forrest Gump online slot game, you can see lots of different clips from the movie throughout the game. Film distributors are more than willing because of the rise in online casinos and the continuing popularity in the standard casino games such as slots. Many online casinos such as Gaming Club offer bonuses to match your deposits when you are playing slots games, so if you are playing for real money, you can have often have double what you started with (and sometimes more) to play with. Alternatively you can enjoy online slots for free and take advantage of the many movie themes on offer.

The Kid With a Bike (Dardennes Brothers, France, 2011)

Ben Livant:

French Loach.

 

By "Loach" obviously I mean, well, Loach; that sort of scrapped-knuckle realism about the fractured domestic lives of working-class people, utterly without sentimentality.  By "French" I mean the cliché conception about that culture always including an element of romanticism; in this case, a mysterious atom around which molecules of love come together.  The Kid With a Bike I like, very much.  It is lean and uncompromising yet delicate and sensitive at the same time.

 

In the first place, it is a error to think that realism must always be grim.  This story concludes on an upbeat note.  The optimism is earned, however.  All of the dramatic conflicts that come up are addressed and resolved in perfectly credible ways.  The narrative solves only those problems that it raised.  We are not compelled to fill in blanks in order to save the appearances.

 

This plot solidity is matched by an equally grounded approach to dialogue.  The characters are often taciturn, which is appropriate, and when they do converse it is prosaic in the extreme but without degenerating into sensationalistic crudity.  I'd have to check, but I believe there is no vulgar language at all.  Insofar as angry swearing is proto-violence, the lack of it signals an essentially safe social environment for our protagonist, which is ultimately born out by the story.  Simultaneously, though, there is only the most minimal use of music and it is never used to reassure us that the world will work out to be benign.  It is only at the happy ending - itself understated and without a trace of glamour - that all threats have been neutralized and everything looks hopeful.

 

Meanwhile, there is that inexplicable - may as well call it spiritual - goodness that manifests itself.  Nothing miraculous.  Far from it.  The lady just has the right moral stuff.  She is a concentrated case of what human beings can, in fact, be sometimes.  Extra, extra, read all about it: Rejected and neglected orphan child gets adopted by ultra-maternal saint!  This corniness is completely avoided by the film.  The Kid With a Bike would come off as some sort of far-fetched fairy tale but for the gradual, incremental development of the connection between the boy and the woman.  Yet, as matter-of-fact as she is, her motivation is never disclosed.  Her altruistic conduct is simply a given; indeed, a gift.  Take it or leave it.  The kid takes it.  And so do we.

 

To be honest, I would not have been able to take it if it had not been brilliantly balanced by the father's abandonment of his offspring.  Here is the deepest accomplishment of the art.  Perhaps he was a deadbeat before, but this man trying to pull up his bootstraps now to help himself only, not also his son, remains a deadbeat dad.  As a single person, he is reasonable, admirable, but as a father he is beyond pitiful, reprehensible.  The way he is portrayed is totally free of Bad Guy-ification, while plainly presenting him as the bad guy, a non-villainous villain.  If the emergence of motherhood verges on too righteous to be true, the degeneration of fatherhood saves it by being too true to be sinister.  The guy just does not have the right moral stuff.  Nothing evil.  Far from it.  He's a concentrated case of what human being can, in fact, sometimes be.

Dan Jardine:

I dug this film plenty enough, and you have touched upon most of the aspects of TKWAB that worked for me, so I don't need to go back over now-familiar territory by re-iterating them here. However, please allow me to single out the work of Thomas Doret as the titular character. The kid avec son bicyclette gives such a completely naturalistic and authentic performance that, so long as he was on screen, I never for a moment doubted the machinations of the screenplay that conspired to make his life so bloody miserable. Doret, mining a familiar vein, reminiscent of other hard knock kids, such as Antoine Doinel in 400 Blows or Martin Compston in Sweet Sixteen, strikes the mother lode here. Really great stuff. 

That said, not everything in the film meets that same standard.  Specifically, the screenplay of TKWAB disappoints when it comes to explaining the undying devotion of Samantha (Cecile de France) the boy's presumptive mother figure. You say that the boy accepts it, as the audience does, but I remain a little sceptical. I need plausible motivation for my central characters, particularly in films in the neo-realistic style like this one, and the Dardennes come up a little short here.

That said, this is a solid film with a stellar performance by Doret at its core. Well worth the 87 minute investment that is TKWAB's running time. 

This is 40 (Judd Apatow, USA, 2012)

Ben Livant:

Another from the Judd & Rudd camp.  I have seen a few before, mostly without Rudd.

I guess at this point it has to be acknowledged that Apatow is the Neil Simon of today.  I realize he directs almost as often as he writes and he produces much more often than either.  So my comparison may seem misguided.  Nevertheless, my point is that Apatow's comedic sensibility has now assumed a nearly hegemonic position in Hollywood just as Simon's dominance of Broadway was transferred to a central place up on mainstream screens back in the day.

More substantively, both of them are experts at creating opportunities for humour in essentially plot-less yet conflictual social situations that are a cut above the competition by somehow giving the impression that an actual story is being told.  Supporting this narrative illusion is the stylistic trick of slipping in a serving of dramatic meat in the interpersonal relations.  The characterizations are very broad but the dialogue can be genuinely meaningful, while always moored to the mandate to be funny.  If I signal to this as a particularly Jewish approach to conversation - emotionally intense yet intellectually focused at the same time, in the service of jokes - I hope I will be forgiven for perpetuating a stereotype.

The point of contrast between Simon and Apatow I would highlight, however, it that the former attended to a decidedly grown-up domestic point of view whereas the latter - reflecting an advancing infantilization of the culture at large over our lifetime -  has been oriented much more to a post-adolescent/sub-adult perspective.  This goes much deeper than the realm of culture, branching out from the society as such, with serious roots in the changing soil of political economy.  Forget about that graduate paper, though.  Let it suffice to say that Apatow's characters are not just more explicitly sexual and verbally vulgar than those of the previous generation - they are much, much more unsure of their individual identities, social roles and moral responsibilities.  This is precisely the source of their humour.

THIS IS 40 looks on the face of it to be about early mid-life crisis in a marriage on both sides equally that resonates as semi-dysfunctional family life.  In fact, the supposed adults are sub-adults who have never fully committed to the ball-and-chain of spouse and children.  Nor have they maturely accepted the middle-aged duty of caring for their parents in whatever form necessary.  They struggle with their domestic assignments in what appears to be a regressive manner but it is really a post-adolescent individualism that has never receded.  Their parents are the same except more so; replicating their original self-centred sins by being not just undependable grandparents but also weak-assed guardians of a second set of kids.  No wonder the two daughters come off as the most reasonable and reliable; not just the calm and naively wise pre-teen, the combustible teenager is legitimately so and by juxtaposition shows up her explosive parents as illegitimately so.

To the extent that this is found ethically unacceptable, it will probably be found unfunny.  Personally, I do not find fault with these characters as I believe they accurately reflect our so-called post-modern times and they deserve to be laughed at.  Besides, the requisite happy ending arrives.  Love triumphs and everyone walks over the finish line with some new-found dignity.  I enjoyed THIS IS 40.  I only ask for a few guffaws from a comedy and this movie brought out of me that few for which I ask.  If nothing else, the scene in the principal's office killed me; hilarious to begin with but truly side-splitting in the out-take as the credits roll.  That actress (Melissa McCarthy) was also one of the funniest things in BRIDESMAIDS.