Titanic

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind, but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

Starship Troopers

Note : This review is my contribution to the Film Preservation blogathon hosted by Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark. Please donate generously.

Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

Humans in a fascistic, militaristic future do battle with giant alien bugs in a fight for survival.

Over the years, the many films of Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven have passed the test of time and became cult films. Just think of Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls for his work in Hollywood and his early European productions are underground hits with strong sexual and violent images.

Starship Troopers is more a virulent critic of America, the use of medias, and the way action movies are representing a right wing perception of life. The story is accessory to Verhoeven’s message of second level one liners and overbearing violence. In the films of Verhoeven, violence is not really stylised or cool, it is in your face just like when Peter Weller dies in Robocop before being in the robot. Even in Starship Troopers, Verhoeven has a way to present violence that does not appeal even with all the saturated frames of blood and special effects. With a production of 105 millions of dollars, Verhoeven achieved a level of imitation of fascism and opulence that only Albert Speer’s architecture could have been compared to.

Many sequences are shot by shot exactly like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will documenting Nazi reunions of the German party. The irony and satiric tone of Starship Troopers makes it such a great piece of anthology that it is almost frightening to think that American ideologies are not that far from what the film represents.

Curiously, at the time Starship Troopers was released, the critics and the public were not that warm about the film. Probably not ready for such an examination of their foreign politics, the turning of the 21st Century with the sad and condemnable events of September 11 may have demonstrated to the face of the world America’s belligerent politics.

As a film enthusiast, or as I like to call myself a cinephile, I really enjoyed Starship Troopers for its second level of reading and how he uses the action sequences to demonstrate a point. They are also really entertaining and this is one of the best part of this film. It has both values that few films of the genre have. In fact, I like most of Verhoeven’s films and I would watch Robocop, Total Recall, or Starship Troopers anytime knowing that it will be a good time and that I will find a little detail I haven’t seen before. They have great watch value and it adds a little omph to the whole thing.

Happy Together

 

Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)

Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a couple from pre-handover Hong Kong, visit Argentina hoping to renew their ailing relationship. The two have a pattern of abuse, followed by breakups and reconciliations. One of their goals in Argentina is to visit the Iguazu waterfalls, which serves as a leitmotif in the movie.

Highly stylized romance drama about the difficult last moments of a relationship between two Hong-Kong men living in Argentina, Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together is a visually beautiful film that leaves impressions more than leaving a clear reflexion on the story that is told in those experimental images.

With impressive shots of black and white and other superb color images, Happy Together feels more or less incomplete in a way that it is almost frustrating that such a beauty needs a couple of final brushes. As much as I think that My Blueberry Nights was too harshly reviewed when it came out, Happy Together did not made a consensus either with critics and fans.

When one reads further on the details of the making of this film, we learn that actors and the director didn’t knew which direction they would get to and the story was being written as they shoot the picture. Wong’s been questioning himself for all scenes and how they would go. This drafty angle of the making of confirms that the film never really materializes in front of our eyes since its director never had a vision of it. This is much like shooting bits here and there but without a tangible purpose. Sometimes great things can happen from this but with Happy Together it doesn’t deliver like we would hope.

It’s not everyday that we can gaze at a Wong Kar-wai film and even if it’s a real visual delight, this is another example of the auteur’s taste for style and form for his film more than substance and something toothier.
In his review, Jonathan Rosenbaum described this better than I could ever formulate it : Like its characters, Happy Together is less a film with a subject than a film about not being able to find one. At best it’s a movie about being at loose ends, though it seems to mean something more for some Chinese viewers.

What consoles me, is that I still haven’t watched Ashes of Time, The Chungking Express, Fallen Idols, and Days of Being Wild and I hope they live up to my expectations.

The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)

The film features an ensemble cast of Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Sigourney Weaver. Set during Thanksgiving 1973, The Ice Storm is about two dysfunctional New Canaan, Connecticut families who are trying to deal with tumultuous political and social changes of the early 1970s, and their escapism through alcohol, adultery, and sexual experimentation.

Recommended Reading : Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles

Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (David Thomson, 1997)

This biography of Orson Welles is an admirer’s look upon a career of failures, fakeries, lies, and some of the most important films in History. David Thomson is clearly a Welles enthusiast and even if his tone is sometimes forgiving of the tempered director he also likes to bring a little gossip on the table of the man-child enfant terrible. While spending numerous pages on the creation of Citizen Kane and its writing, structure, team he almost never mentions the context of creation of his other pictures. Even if Kane is the first film by Welles and his most important, a little more element on the other completed projects could have been a great import in the book.

After closing the book, I felt like I didn’t learned much more about the films and life of Orson Welles and I would rather much recommend the book he co-wrote with Peter Bogdanovich; This is Orson Welles instead. Still, it brings some light on a life that has been almost a myth to many cinephiles around the world.

The Sweet Hereafter

The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)

This film documents the effects of a tragic bus accident on the population of a small town.

The Egyptian born director, now Canadian, Atom Egoyan divided film critics and cinephiles in two camps: two who loved his films and those who admire them but not get into them because of his phantasmagorias. With his greatest success The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan received an Oscar nomination and won much respect from film enthusiasts. The film is even on the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time and the 1001 Movies You Should See Before You Die lists. Voted as the fourth most important Canadian film of all time let’s discuss The Sweet Hereafter.

Les Boys

Note: this a new series of reviews I'm installing on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque. Since I was born and raised in the Province of Québec I've decided to present and review some of the films that populate my culture and that represents the Cinema of here. The feature will be called after our license plate motto: "Je me souviens" for "I remember".

Les Boys aka The Boys (Louis Saïa, 1997)

This sport/comedy film about a team of amateur Hockey players sponsored by the tavern of the corner, Stanley's (Rémi Girard) is a cult film in Québec. The cult status of George Roy Hill's film Slap Shot dubbed in Québec is also one of the most popular films here along with the Disney flick The Mighty Ducks "trilogy". First because of the subject matter: Hockey our national sport and one of the most cultural interest in our people but also because comedies dubbed in Québécois directly talks to us here. Les Boys was such a hit that it was the only film in the world that beat James Cameron's super-mega-giga hit Titanic on its openning weekend here. Hollywood producers were calling their distributors asking: Who are those Boys? It was such a hit that it got three subsequent sequels. In our little Province of eight millions of habitants the film beat numerous records.

The charm of this film comes from the fact that the regular viewer could easily identifies himself with the guy next door players that were united by the team but also for their friendship and loyalty towards Stanley their friend and sponsor. Stanley had to accept a loan from a shylock but we he can't pay Méo (Pierre Lebeau) anymore he must rely on the team. With once again a bunch of well known and liked actors of Québec; Rémi Girard (Incendies, Les invasions barbares, Le déclin de l'empire américain), Marc Messier (Lance et compte), Patrick Huard, Serge Thériault, Michel Barrette, Paul Houde, Yvan Ponton (Slap Shot), Pierre Lebeau, Luc Guérin and many others.

This is far from being a great film and it is passably good, however we cherish this film because it depicts stereotypes of ourselves and we like the self-depreciation, the comedy, and the lovable losers portrayed. It is probably unfunny for those who don't understand French because a dubbed version or even a sub-titled of this wouldn't give justice to the effect of the dialogues and the pedestrian talking of the characters.


Rating:

Boogie Nights

Boogie Nights (P.T. Anderson, 1997)

Jean Renoir once said that "everything that is recorded with a microphone and filmed with a camera together is Cinema. There isn't any criteria to dismiss any work of this kind."

When I discovered Anderson's There Will Be Blood in theater back in 2007, I immediately knew that I was in presence of a great filmmaker's work. All of his films reflect the grammar of his masters. When you look at There Will Be Blood you feel like you were watching a modern made version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed and even Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. His Magnolia feels like an interpretation of Robert Altman's particular ensemble narratives. For Punch Drunk Love I have some difficulties to identify to whom he applies the grammar and the narratives but it still a one of a kind picture.