Thursday, March 27, 2008

by Erik

Funny Games:

Michael Haneke is a brilliant filmmaker in my opinion. I've seen Cache (HIDDEN), Time of the Wolf and now this, his [I'm told] shot-for-shot American remake of the 1997 film of the same name starring the great (and sadly recently deceased) Ulrich Muhe (from the brilliant Lives of Others). First off, the poster for this film is amazing, as well as the Clockwork Orange-inspired trailer. Michael Pitt and Brady Corbett are creepy as the two invaders Peter and Paul (or Tom and Jerry, they refer to themselves with numerous silly names) and Naomi Watts again proves to be a daring and skilled actress. And great to see Tim Roth getting better work these days (haven't seen Youth Without Youth yet, but I still really want to check it out), few actors can show pain and suffering quite as well as him. This film is smart, provocative, insightful, deranged, dark and disturbing. Also, it never veers into pretentious bullshit. Haneke is a director to watch. I plan on checking out Code Unkown and The Piano Teacher soon, and of course I will eventually watch the "real" version of Funny Games as it is the original.

 
Paranoid Park;

Gus Van Sant again doing the low budget, non-actor, simple story involving death and teenagers. While I liked Elephant and found Last Days to be just OK (it's really hard to sit through), Paranoid Park felt like the best story for this recent arty aesthetic Van Sant has been experimenting with. A possible murder is at the heart of the story, but it's really about getting inside the head of a modern-day teenager, so the off-kilter dialogue and acting feels right because it is showing the mind of a 16 year old kid. This is a really good film with the usual visual wizardry from DP Chrisopher Doyle (shooting in grainy 8mm for the skateboard footage and big beautiful 35mm for the story).