THE ARTIST – “Beyond Golden”

The Artist, directed by Michael Hazanavicius, 2012

SPANKY: John, you seemed to like this movie a lot more than I did. It started out well, then began to drag (except for the RCA Victor dog) only to pull around at the end. I think if we are judging a film on its worth, not on the meaning we can attribute to it or our personal film-going history, this one is, at best, an oddball that slipped into the Oscar mainstream because it ostensibly had something to do with the development of cinema.

2 Barks out of 4

JOHN: I saw this after the reviews were in and the film won “best picture,” but I think most people, including the Academy, missed its point.  Sure  the advent of talkies was a convenient metaphor, but this is about an artist who can’t communicate directly with the man on the street. An artist who doesn’t want the pity or support of those who can.  And, literally, the French director lets us in the audience experience this silence. We feel this disappointment (that is the let-down in interest you complain about, Spanky). The solution, is not to give up, or become a crowd pleasing talker. He is an “Artist.” The answer is to adapt his art to the times and be new and fresh all over again.  He and his love do this through tap dancing (with sound) and we feel the joy. We can’t dance, but he can for us.

In 2010r, a brilliant film that spoke to who we are and what our world has become, Social Network, was just a little too edgy for an Academy Award. This film succeeds because it is subtle and misleading. But its message is particularly meaningful for the floundering movie/television industry. And as a writer, I found it more real, more touching, more meaningful to me than any “entertainment” has been for a long, long time.

PS. Words on the page don’t talk either. Or do they?

4 GOs out of 4

BLACK SWAN—“Red Shoes Meets Carrie”

Black Swan – Darren Aronofsky, director, 2011

JOHN: This is a super tense film. Why? That is the most interesting question. We don’t identify with the main character and know or care that much about ballet. After it’s over it may dawn on us that Portman (as with that other classic Red Shoes) is embodying the storyline of Swan Lake, but that is an intellectualization and what we experience is much more intense. Credit goes to the superb star and flawless camera work and editing and some peeling of skin and being stabbed by a mirror (Carrie moments that are difficult to forget).

MOULIN ROUGE! – “The Show Must Go On”

Moulin Rouge! Baz Luhrmann, writer/director

2001

JOHN: There it is. Something perfect and we, in the audience, are already asking what’s next: Catcher in the Rye II, Beethoven’s 9^th continued, Judy Garland squared. The plot of this breathlessly romantic but giddily post-modern musical is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl (boy loses her again). The location: Paris, Paris, PARIS.