The current cinema (love it to death edition)

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• Lex says:

  October 21, 2010 at 11:44 pm

  I really, really dug this, espe­cially Damon’s incred­ible, relat­able sad­sack per­form­ance. Can’t think of too many recent movies where I was pulling for a guy to get the girl (a nar­rat­ive Eastwood pulls off TWICE in the movie, without giv­ing too much a way.)
  And Bryce Dallas Hot-ard in this is EXACTLY the way I wish all women acted. SO FETCHING.
  Anyway, I always like Eastwood, but thought this was one of the best from his renais­sance peri­od. Apparently no one really agrees, ’cause it was Groans Ahoy after the movie in my audience.
  Plus I had no idea Marthe Keller was still working.
  But do British kids really still wear the Oliver Twist hat and ward­robe in 2010?

• Scott says:

  October 22, 2010 at 2:41 am

  Count me in as one of the people who really did­n’t like “Hereafter”, and who blames much of its fail­ure on Peter Morgan. Interestingly, I came across this inter­view with Morgan (from Interview Magazine), and I think it’s worth read­ing, espe­cially the part where he reveals that much of the impetus for devel­op­ing the script came from the per­son­al loss of a good friend:
  ‘MORGAN: Yeah, he was god­fath­er to my chil­dren, and a former boy­friend of my wife, a really close friend, and, at his funer­al, I thought, I really want to explore this movie again. So, I went back to my desk, and I sent it to my agent, and they sent it to—in a very exper­i­ment­al stage—Kathy Kennedy, and she sent it to Steven Spielberg, and he sent it to Clint. And he said he wanted to do it and not change any­thing. He said, “This is some­thing that really spoke to me, this is del­ic­ate and gentle, I’d like to work it. I like things to be instinct­ive.” And for me, I quite like to hone things down, I like to work some­thing to the ground. He thought that with mater­i­al like this, if you were to do the work, it would become too pre­med­it­ated and cul­tured. He said what’s beau­ti­ful about the movie, in his eyes, is its raw­ness, and its lack of schem­at­ic intent. So, there you have it! I’m as bewildered as any­body else!“ ‘
  http://www.interviewmagazine.com/blogs/film/2010–10-15/peter-morgan-hereafter/
  After read­ing that, I think I can appre­ci­ate the raw, search­ing qual­ity Eastwood and Morgan were going for. But I feel that a movie like this prob­ably could have used a little more detach­ment and ana­lys­is, which are things that don’t neces­sar­ily have to come at the expense of emo­tion. It seemed to me a film made with a little too much feel­ing (if that’s pos­sible) and not enough intel­li­gence (often fall­ing on cliches and plat­it­udes). And, my God, that ending!
  I sup­pose my feel­ing is amp­li­fied by the fact that I’m cur­rently read­ing a book called “Mourning Diary” by Roland Barthes, which has just recently been pub­lished for the first time. After the death of his beloved moth­er, Barthes began filling index cards with frag­ments and reflec­tions on his grief. It really is a diary, very raw and abstract, with no over-arching struc­ture (or “schem­at­ic intent”, as Morgan would say). But, it’s a work of tre­mend­ous rig­or and self-analysis and insight, while still being very emo­tion­al and deeply-felt. So I guess my point is that it’s pos­sible; par­tic­u­larly with­in the talky, con­tem­plat­ive European-arthouse-film-milieu that Eastwood seems to be exper­i­ment­ing with here.

• Oliver_C says:

  October 22, 2010 at 6:33 am

  “But do British kids really still wear the Oliver Twist hat and ward­robe in 2010?”
  I cer­tainly don’t. 🙂

• Kent Jones says:

  October 22, 2010 at 11:17 am

  I don’t think it’s any kind of great movie, but I really enjoyed it, and I thought the scene between Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard in his apart­ment was abso­lutely beautiful.
  Personally, I thought Eastwood was sparked by Damon’s char­ac­ter. Who is bet­ter at film­ing people alone, cut off, a little sad, build­ing safe, snug private worlds?
  Here’s a ques­tion: how many more “think pieces” are we going to get about Clint Eastwood “break­ing the mold” and leav­ing behind his “Dirty Harry per­sona” and going in a “bold new direction?”

• EOTW says:

  October 22, 2010 at 12:19 pm

  Won’t be see­ing this, at least not until it hits Blu Ray, but am glad Clint is going strong. He made LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (his last mas­ter­piece) just a few years ago. He gets a pass from me for a long time.

• bill says:

  October 22, 2010 at 2:25 pm

  FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is much bet­ters than LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. I don’t under­stand why every­one does­n’t real­ize this yet.

• Tom Russell says:

  October 22, 2010 at 2:55 pm

  I’m with Bill, for reas­ons explained the last time the top­ic came up.

• bill says:

  October 22, 2010 at 3:05 pm

  And I *thought* we’d cleared up this con­fus­tion *then*!

• bill says:

  October 22, 2010 at 3:16 pm

  Man, I can­’t type today. Well, good night, I guess.

• Jaime says:

  October 22, 2010 at 4:59 pm

  Sometimes Eastwood does two pic­tures a year, and I back the wrong one. Oh well. :l
  It may be that FLAGS is the bet­ter film, but it did­n’t affect me as deeply as LETTERS. Same thing happened with CHANGELING (which I loved) and GRAN TORINO (which I did­n’t). I’m open to see­ing FLAGS and TORINO in the future and being more in tune with them.
  Re: HEREAFTER, I expec­ted a much more bru­tal crit­ic­al slaughter and I’m sur­prised so many people are sup­port­ing it – albeit guardedly. I was­n’t too pleased by it (and I’ve been wear­ing the “I Blame Peter Morgan” T‑shirt since the last day of the 2010 NYFF) but I’m heartened that it’s turn­ing into some­thing like a res­cue anim­al. But this is not a bad thing, and no anom­aly as far as the his­tory of cinephil­ia is concerned.
  I think the thing I liked best about it was Richard Kind’s walk-on at the begin­ning of the Damon thread. Character act­ors FTW, in Twitterspeak.

• Nick says:

  October 23, 2010 at 2:46 am

  Letters From Iwo Jima is def­in­itely not the wrong to back, so to speak. It’s my favor­ite movie of his and my favor­ite movie from that year. I don’t think he’s come close to it since, but Hereafter is def­in­itetly the strongest since then. I did­n’t care for Changeling, Gran Torino was all over the place, and Invictus really lost me in the last third of the film (the smeary digit­al motion looked awful.)
  I get the sense from his more recent work of a kind of cob­bling togeth­er. Because he’s only doing one take of everything, some­thing like Jay Mohr drop­ping an envel­ope stays in the movie, and he’ll digit­ally pro­cess a cam­era move (the move in on Damon’s face in the last scene), or stick in a bunch of stock foot­age (a plane tak­ing off, a shot of Paris). I don’t mind it so much, but it stands in stark con­trast to how good everything else is.

• Terry McCarty says:

  October 23, 2010 at 3:23 am

  Will split the dif­fer­ence in the above comments:
  HEREAFTER was an improve­ment on the too pro-forma INVICTUS (and thank­fully it’s not a late-career bum­mer like Robert Wise’s sermon-on-reincarnation AUDREY ROSE), but the last genu­inely good recent Eastwood film remains CHANGELING.
  Presuming the Hoover biop­ic will return Clint to the awards-season derby.

• Don R. Lewis says:

  October 25, 2010 at 12:01 am

  I too enjoyed HEREAFTER and am able to for­give it’s schmaltz due to Damon and some really great scenes. I thought the cook­ing class scene with him and Howard (where they’re blind­folded) was, well, kind of won­der­ful. The film struck me as “Capra-esque” even. I also liked the lead act­ress who I had no CLUE was the lead in HIGH TENSION until days later.
  Also-
  I can­’t believe people are pro­claim­ing love for CHANGELING. That movie is hil­ari­ously awful. Like, so bad I was look­ing around the theat­er to see if any­one else thought it was as ridicu­lous as I did.

• Hollis Lime says:

  October 25, 2010 at 12:24 pm

  I was by no means a fan of Eastwood’s last three films, and maybe it was the low expect­a­tions due to the bad buzz, but I found this film really mov­ing. I had my guard up for a cringe-worthy moment that nev­er came, and I was taken aback by how, well, sub­dued it all was. Great per­form­ances all around too, espe­cially Matt Damon, who I think has basic­ally become the most subtle Hollywood act­or of his gen­er­a­tion. I also will take a guess and say this is the first film in Hollywood his­tory to cli­max at a book fair.
  Eastwood’s best since “Letter’s From Iwo Jima”.

• Bruce Reid says:

  October 25, 2010 at 10:58 pm

  I’ll cop to Eastwood par­tis­an­ship as well, but have to admit his need to under­line some effects reduced what could have been a mas­ter­piece to merely a fine film. The teddy bear you men­tion was quite haunt­ing and effect­ive float­ing high above the cam­era near water­’s crest; mov­ing to a close-up is what threatened to raise giggles. Yet in the very next scene (dis­reg­ard­ing the glimpses of immor­tal­ity) Eastwood can dis­play mas­ter­ful pre­ci­sion and restraint, sta­ging the burn­ing ship so it only licks at the edges of the frame, dis­turb­ing and dis­or­i­ent­ing, without draw­ing focus from De France’s gasp­ing back to life.
  Eastwood’s biggest weak­ness has always been this tend­ency toward over­em­phas­is, prob­ably the root of his fond­ness for first drafts, got­ten to before the con­scien­tious screen­writer can go about tact­fully bury­ing his themes. So I really did­n’t need Damon remind­ing us his gift was, instead, a curse on two sep­ar­ate occa­sions; or De France’s unearned right­eous­ness when insist­ing to her pub­lish­ers that talk­ing about the after­life was indeed a polit­ic­al top­ic. (Though I do like the way con­tact with the here­after causes worldly con­cerns to fade, how De France seems barely cog­niz­ant of the London bomb­ings or Damon has to be caught up on the poten­tial lay­offs at the factory.)
  But if first drafts and two-takes-and-we’re-out is what’s required to achieve McLaren’s silent insist­ence on a now use­less twin bed, or Damon’s trans­ition dur­ing Howard’s read­ing from awk­ward reluct­ance to the still, somber know­ledge that things have played out as pain­fully and irre­cov­er­ably as he knew they would, then Eastwood should keep it up till he’s finally liv­ing out his fine John Huston impres­sion, dir­ect­ing with an oxy­gen tank at his side and the insur­ance law­yers nervously hov­er­ing by.
  One ques­tion: did any­one else feel that Damon was lying to McLaren at the end? Not dur­ing the entire read­ing, but when the boy’s loneli­ness and con­fu­sion over­whelmed him, and Damon sud­denly insisted “no, no, wait, he’s com­ing back” (or words to that effect), then offered stand­ard but heart­felt, and effect­ive, brom­ides. It seemed to hint in that dir­ec­tion, and offered a nice wrinkle to the frauds and self-satisfied fools McLaren suffered dur­ing his searches (love the incred­u­lous little head-shake he gives to the preach­er on YouTube). But I could be read­ing into it.