Francis Veber's The Valet (2006)

No essay available at this time.

Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006)

There haven’t been all that many successful movies made about magicians. Not white-bearded wizards or spellcasting warlocks, mind you – I’m talking about realistic illusionists. The movies are there, don’t get me wrong, but if you compare the number of movies strictly about magicians with just about any other subject matter, you’ll find the department in question … lacking.

It’s not difficult to see why making a decent movie about magicians is near impossible. The ONE thing that magicians have going for them is their ability to seemingly defy natural law right in front of an audience’s eyes. That’s just what they do. Unfortunately, a filmmaker would be hard-pressed to evoke a similar sense of awe and amazement in a movie about magicians because today’s society doesn’t trust what they see on a screen anymore. Since the dawn of modern special effects, we’ve had to abandon any notion that something amazing in a movie actually happened. Any trick that a magician could perform could be so easily replicated with special effects, it wouldn’t be worth an audience’s attention.

Keeping this in mind, you can tell why Christopher Nolan (Memento, Dark Knight trilogy) was the perfect man for the job of making an amazing movie about magic. When The Prestige was released in 2006, it had to compete with the precedent set by Neil Burger’s The Illusionist which had hit theaters just two months prior. Burger gave moviegoers a dramatic love story – sure, he used a conjurer as the vehicle by which he could tell it, but it was centrally a love story. Burger recognized that creating a good tale strictly about magic was doomed to fail and created an entirely different set of tensions within the plot. I actually really enjoyed The Illusionist, but in my mind it was nothing compared to The Prestige.

And that’s because Nolan figures out how to make a successful movie about magicians. Instead of trying to make a movie about magic tricks, he makes his own magic trick. The Prestige itself is one big artifice. I think that’s part of what makes it such an enjoyable movie. Probably the most significant lines from the movie are spoken by the magicians’ stage engineer, Cutter:

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge.’ The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird, or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course … it probably isn't. The second act is called ‘The Turn.’ The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret … but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige.’"

I won’t ruin the plot by explaining exactly how the movie fits perfectly into Cutter’s explanation of what makes a great trick, but I promise that it does. Nolan doesn’t try to amaze us with tricks performed by the magicians (although I loved the way he showed how some of their tricks were performed); instead he amazes us with the trick of his own while actually managing to focus entirely on the lives of two magicians throughout the story. By doing this, Nolan is finally able to evoke that sense of open-jawed bewilderment in his audience that no other movie about magic could ever accomplish. He brings the awe of watching a magic trick in person to the big screen, which is why I call The Prestige one of his greatest works.

Christian Koch
Film Club Co-President

Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. (2008)

No essay available at this time.

Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002)

In honor of the Lunar New Year, we leave our teenage angst perspective for one with a different color, a foreign taste. Enter our Eastern friends with Chinese kung fu. When exploring the realm of martial arts, the first noticeable trait that the eye catches is no doubt how ridiculous these actors look flying in the air with their unrealistic swordsmanship. In fact, Hero is an entire spectacle of ridiculous notions. From a warrior warding off thousands of arrows with nothing but her sleeves to a battle taking place solely on water, Hero upholds the standard that has somehow become essential to any kung fu movie.

I used to hate that about my favorite Asian films. As a child, my movie was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I worshipped every scene and every score of music as if I was its creator. Frankly I still do, and I cringe whenever I hear someone talking about it as if it was just another movie. It lures me in with an intense and emotional pull that I cannot describe other than nostalgia. But one day (the first and last), I decided to share this personal treasure of mine with a friend who had never seen the film. The only reaction from her was laughter. For how could anyone take a movie like this seriously, where people are ricocheting off roofs and balancing on bamboo trees?!

I used to think that this ridiculous aspect took away from the important themes and lessons that one can find in a martial arts film. But honestly, the immense fakeness is necessary. It is a mirror of ourselves as people, who do ridiculously evil things to each other all of the time as nations, as races, and as opposites (who are not as opposite as we think).

If you are new to the martial arts scene, I suggest Hero as the perfect starting point because it exquisitely incorporates the inescapable sense of hysterics with the realization of deep morals. This may seem like an odd pairing to put together in a movie, but is perfectly balanced with an immense and indescribable beauty that renowned director Zhang Yimou has once again created. It may then be surprising to learn that the most beautiful movie I have ever laid eyes on is about nothing but war. Let me explain.

Hero takes place during a time in China’s history when the warring states were still struggling for control over one another. Though it is a period film, the movie’s underlying messages transcend any time or culture barriers because it is about war, an ugly complex that humanity fails to avoid again and again. War is the dirty little secret behind civilization and remains an inescapable truth throughout world history. And because death is a part of life, it is also beautiful in its twistingly human way. Hero magnifies that beauty and morphs the crude nature of humanity into a simple lesson of morals. Movie reviewer Roger Ebert states that it is violent only incidentally. But perhaps the movie suggests that violence itself is incidental in the grander scheme of understanding ourselves.

Peace and honor are hard words to take seriously in our time and society. Laughable even. Possibly the root to why kung fu movies seem so ridiculous. But for me at least, this movie brought back the inspiration that is hidden in these concepts. If anything, watch Hero to fall back in love with the romanticism behind honoring one’s country or with the primitive instinct to put your love over yourself. Watch the movie for the colors, the cinematography, the music, everything that is so brilliantly put together in order to give us a sense of who we are and how we can learn to do the right thing.

Gina Nguyen
Guest Commentator

Mark Waters' Mean Girls (2004)

The best villains in film do not believe that they are evil. A movie’s “good” and “bad” sides that create conflict are often relative, a complexity that makes both the characters and the movie more enjoyable. Imagine taking on the role of a villain. You can’t think: “My character knows what he (or she) is doing is bad but does it anyway.” That’s not real. The villainous characters must truly think that their side or course of action is the right way.

In Joss Whedon’s film, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog (2008), for example, the main character (played by Neil Patrick Harris) has a goal; he wants to make it into the Evil League of Evil, and he must commit murder for his application to be successful. But watching him, understanding his motives and his goals and his life, the viewer ends up rooting for him. Really. You root for the villain, instead of the hero, because even when he’s doing bad, he believes it’s for the best. And because in understanding that, you have sympathy for him.

In other films, the ones that take a more two-dimensional approach to heroism, villains still exist, but they are not presented in the in-depth way that Dr. Horrible does. We here at Film Club like complex villains. And we think this accounts for some of the most truly evil, but also most amazing, characters of all time: Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight; Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates from Psycho; Edith Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz; and finally, Rachel McAdams’ Regina George from Mean Girls.

But the beauty of Mean Girls is not just in the way that it avoids the cliché “good girl” vs. “mean girl, or the way that the obvious villain, Regina, is portrayed. It’s the way that the true villain is brought out of hiding. Cady, the main character played by Lindsay Lohan, is a perfectly clean slate, a character who the way evil might develop in all of us. Throughout the film,  Cady may start out pure and honest, but as the film progresses she loses her moral balance and an imperfect sense of the line between right and wrong.

At the beginning of the film, Cady doesn’t even know there is a line. As time goes on, she sees where it is, but afterwards, as mean girl events spiral out of control, her view is distorted. Why does this happen? Because the film’s true villain, Regina, distorts Cady’s perception of the world. That’s how evil she is. And Cady’s naiveté and innocence work against her. Yet at no time does Regina throw back her head and laugh evilly – moo-hoo-ha-ha-ha-haaaa! – because she’s not a caricaturish villain; she’s just a girl in high school who likes to be in charge and get others to do things her way.

Cady’s “fall” in her conflict with Regina, doesn’t make her completely evil either. But no longer is she spotless. And, in fact we can see that very few of the characters in Mean Girls are perfect heroes in the madness of high school. And many have mean streaks. Fortunately, there’s no one like that at SPA. Just keep telling yourself: “It’s only a movie!”

Kaia Findlay
Film Club Publicist

Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Essay unavailable at this time.

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Essay not available at this time.

Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

Your Humble Commentator wants to talk about something fairly peripheral to tonight’s film, but the gist will be that you want to watch one of Sylvain Chomet’s films in a particular way, and it may be slightly different from how you expect to be watching The Triplets of Belleville. Let’s begin with a little story.

This summer I took daughter #3 to see Disney’s Tangled at the Riverview Theater. A impressive show, Tangled provides the usual well-drawn storybook characters – repressed but plucky heroine, roguish but vulnerable hero, cute animal sidekick (a chameleon), exasperated animal sidekick (Flynn’s horse), and a witchy villain. And the plot moves along with deftly handled comic and tragic turns. The laughs come easily and so do tears. Watching Tangled, one is reminded why Disney has been the best at providing animated features since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937; honorary Oscar for innovation in 1939). I walked out of the theater thinking, “it’s hard to make an animated feature more polished than that.”

And I drove home, dropped off daughter #3 and picked up daughter #1, and drove back to the Riverview to see Sylvain Chomet’s most recent animated feature, The Illusionist (2010). In it, a down-on-his-luck vaudeville prestidigitator travels around Europe performing in run-down theaters to nearly non-existent crowds. In one inn, he meets and befriends a waifish girl, who decides to travel with him to the big city where he is trying to survive on what engagements he can scare up. They live together, she explores the big city, dreams about a better life, finds it, and that’s about it. It may not seem like much, but it is an undeniably beautiful film. I found myself as impressed by what it didn’t do as by what it did. And I found myself comparing the two films, struck by how different they were, and how much that revealed about what our culture has come to expect of the animated feature film.

For one, where Tangled was polished, The Illusionist was rough. One feels free to follow where it leads, to peer into its nooks and crannies, to ponder its suggestions. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard’s film (the Disney film) leads you to clear, familiar places. It’s hard to watch Tangled and not see reflections of earlier Disney movies, subtly shifted to give the impression of newness. Likewise, the Disney film controls your emotions, giving you big laugh gags followed by tear-jerking melodrama (the hero dies! after sacrificing first his selfishness, then himself for the heroine! then – get another handkerchief – he comes back to life!). Chomet paints a more muted, bittersweet picture – you may chuckle but at moments that are slightly disturbing, and you may be disturbed at moments that are darkly funny. But what emerges from the Chomet experience is a sense that you’ve encountered a true portrait of what life is like. And that it has been presented to you with a simple charm, like a small gift hand-wrapped in yesterday’s giftwrap.

Yes, Disney’s Tangled is presenting a fairytale, not at all the same thing. We want romance, intrepid heroes overcoming adversity, and neat conclusions from those movies. And Disney gives that to us with panache and professionalism. That’s expected.

From Chomet, though, Your Humble Commentator wants you to relish the unexpected, the magic of depicting human life in all its quirkiness. The Triplets of Belleville has an awkward narrative, not easy to follow at first. But the story in not the priority. Watch the characters. Watch the magic. Watch the life.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s A Town Called Panic (2009)

As you walked in to the film tonight, you got a little plastic army man, common plaything of 1960s and ‘70s children, or as we here at Film Club Central are calling it: Your Stop-Action Animation Starter Kit^©. Because, really, this is all it takes. You find some small objects or clay, grab your camera and take a picture, move the object a little bit, take another picture, and repeat until you’re famous. Like Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park. You can do this with your Barbies (as Todd Haynes did with his famous bio-pic of Karen Carpenter, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”) or GI Joes (if you go to www.gijoefest.com, you’ll find a whole film festival devoted to stop-action films starring the macho dolls) or simply random objects (post-its, rubber bands, Pixie Sticks, dice, a dollar bill, candy corn, Rubik’s Cubes as in “Western Spaghetti by PES” on YouTube).

Now the trick is obviously to get enough stuff moving that you can approximate life, humor, character, story, and all the other stuff that makes a good film. Stépahne Aubier and Vincent Patar have done that with Panic au Village or, as it is called in English, A Town Called Panic. Using a wide variety of small plastic toys, they’ve created an entire rural community where one’s shape, be it pig or horse or indian or cowboy or Atlantean, is not an impediment to one’s role in life or ability to behave in hilariously human ways. In fact, one might argue that it is not in spite of the actors being small plastic toys but because of their being small plastic toys that we’re able to explore more fully the comedy of human nature.

When the film opens, Cowboy and Indian are coming to realization that they’re unprepared for their roommate Horse’s birthday. What ensues, which involves an over-abundance of bricks, a robot penguin, a crushed house, piano lessons, stolen walls, tractors, kleptomaniac sea people, mad scientists with a snow-ball catapult, and more that we aren’t going to list here, is less panic than manic. The insanity of the plot stands in stark contrast to the warmer domestic comedies of Nick Park’s claymation Wallace and Gromit films or the alien jerkiness of Ray Harryhausen monsters in 1950s and ‘60s sci-fi films like Jason and the Argonauts. Aubier and Patar’s world has the same innocence, charm, and crazy non-sequitor rambling that one would expect if children really were just playing with these toys.

And that’s what there is to love about stop-action work. It has a D.I.Y. quality that means it never moves very far from your imagination. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of craft, cleverness, and pain-staking work in Aubier and Patar’s film. But it looks like they simply made it in their bedroom one weekend.

Now, not everyone who watches a movie secretly wants to be a film-maker, but as movies become increasingly technical and expensive (Avatar, anyone?), they feel in some ways more alien, more distanced from our own imaginations. Certainly James Cameron or George Lucas would argue that computers are allowing us to expand our imaginations in ways we never could before, to create fantasies that look like reality. But you don’t sit in the theater saying, “I could do that.”

So right now pick up your army man. Walk him across your leg. Maybe you make him say “Hi there. Does this gun go with my outfit?” And maybe, if your friend is taking pictures, you could make it into a short film. And just like that, you’re a star.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Phil Tucker's Robot Monster in 3-D (1953) and National Geographic's Sea Monsters 3D (2007)

The Rubicon and SPA Film Club present
"3-D: Then and Now"

Then… Robot Monster

In 1953, the first major motion picture in 3-D (Man in the Dark) hit theaters. Patrons donned their anaglyph glasses, sat in stadium seats and watched as American cinema changed forever.

In that same year, 25-year old Phil Tucker directed and released Robot Monster, a science fiction movie shot and projected in dual-strip, polarized 3-D. The stereoscopic photography in the film is high quality for the time, impressive from a crew that had no experience with the previously unused camera rig. In spite of this accomplishment, Robot Monster is considered one of the worst films ever made.

So why would we choose it? Because it is SO bad, it’s good. Who can resist a character like the evil “Ro-man” who comes to earth in his bad gorilla suit and diving helmet to exterminate all the “hu-mans” remaining after the rocket explosions, lightning storms and giant lizard attacks? Or odd courting rituals like tying a woman up to show her deep, undying affection? And who can forget moments like Ro-Man’s impassioned line (think Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” speech): “I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet? Yet I must - but I cannot!” Try getting that one past an SPA English teacher in an essay. No, actually… please don’t.

This film is wonderfully terrible and an important 66 minutes of 3-dimensional history.

Now… Sea Monsters 3-D: A Prehistoric Adventure

The way monsters are depicted in National Geographic’s Sea Monsters is a stark contrast to the 3-D of the 1950s. While Robot Monster focuses on adding depth behind the screen, the Sea Monsters swim toward the viewer. In truth, both effects are created by playing with depth perception but that is not the point: truly, you will be carried away by the mysterious creatures in this animated documentary.

Sea Monsters shows what marine life looked like in prehistoric times, and you will see no gorilla suits, here: everything from the Dolichorhynchops family we follow through the film to the amazing Styxosaurus, a fish larger than an adult male, is connected to archeological discovery.

Not only is Sea Monsters 3-D, but it was shot in IMAX for the biggest of the big screens. National Geographic cut no corners making this film; they brought in big names like Tony Award-winning actor Liev Schreiber to narrate; Richard Evans, David Rhodes and Peter Gabriel collaborated on the score. Think of Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film Say Anything, John Cusak and boom box and you’ll recall how iconic Gabriel’s music can be in a film.

And speaking of the 1980s, when I was in elementary and middle school 3-D films made a comeback, especially with sequel thrillers. Jaws 3-D (1983) and Friday, the 13^th 3-D (1982) hit the screens and had me covering my eyes but peeking through my fingers. So when The Rubicon staff said, “Let’s do a 3-D issue,” I couldn’t help but think terrifying … and fun!

Today 3-D is more popular than it has ever been. With the invention of Real 3-D and 3-D televisions, the big screen magic 1953 film patrons experienced can be replicated in the comfort of your own family room… or in Bigelow Commons. Enjoy the shows!

Kathryn Campbell
The Rubicon Adviser

Stephen Frears’s High Fidelity (2000)

One question we encounter frequently with film, because so many movies are derived from books, is 'which is better, the original text or the cinematic version?' In a way, this is an unfair question. After all, each medium stands on its own, so a movie is either worthy or it isn’t regardless of where its script originates. What’s more the question tends to get asked only when the book is of note. Alfred Hitchcock, for example, made a great movie called To Catch a Thief (1955) with a screenplay from a David Dodge book of the same name. As much as we say about Hitchcock’s auteurist and distinctive approach to film-making, the movie followed the text very closely. But no one remarks on that because few have ever heard of the book.

That’s less true of a book and movie like High Fidelity (or for that matter True Grit, a highly acclaimed novel from the 1960s that has now been made into two famous movies, the most recent of which, by the Coen brothers, may win an Oscar). A conversation about High Fidelity frequently includes references to Nick Hornby’s novel. In both works, John Cusack plays a local record shop owner who spends much of his time reviewing the rollercoaster of his romantic relationships. The most charming aspect of Hornby’s book is that Rob specifies his moods and concerns by making lists – lists of albums, lists of his own life events, lists of musicians. At one point, for example, he lists his top five break ups of all time.

But Rob’s lists represent a desperate attempt to put the things that happen to him romantically in some sort of context because he “fails to comprehend the complexities of the female gender [and] surrounds his attempt to understand his current challenging break up through the examination of his past failed romances.” Rob fights off this pattern of self loathing and self deprecation by creating the lists and constantly asking his friends to create lists, like ones of their top 10 artists of all time. When it comes down to it, Rob is a true music lover, and a true romantic. He’s struggling to find out who he is, and ultimately, why did those girls dump him!

In the book, these lists are hilarious little side-bars, which evoke for the reader either mystification (what’s that about???) or sympathetic connection. They’re like organized similes. For director Stephen Frears (The Grifters, The Queen), the challenge is to take something fairly literary but essential (the lists say a ton about Rob’s character), and translate it into a medium that is visual and realistic. Part of the success of the film version is Frears’ choice of John Cusack, an award winning actor, to play Rob.

John Cusack’s Rob is hopelessly lost, forever confused lover boy of the late ‘90s. Cusack is the kind of actor whose sincerity and perpetual youthfulness allow him to pull off the very literary sort of lines that open the film: “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? Rob tries to answer the questions we are too scared to ask ourselves! Was she the right one? Or did I just let the right one slip between my fingers? Shit… is there even someone who is the one?” NO body talks like that. But by the end of the speech, we like Rob, partly because we like Cusack.

So where does all this get us? If you haven’t read the book, it won’t matter. The movie is the movie. Cusack is Rob. The writing is engaging and fun. If you have read the book, you have the option on a great conversation. The question is never “which is better?” It’s how do the two works talk to each other? What does Cusack do to your original impression of Rob? What did Frears choose to leave out, and what effect did that have? What insights did the film’s changes (differences from the original text) reveal about what the film-maker thought about the story? Or what impact did experiencing the story in a visual medium rather than a literary one have on you? Those are fun questions. We hope you enjoy High Fidelity and come up with some questions of your own. Or if you haven’t read the book, maybe you’ll check it out so you can.

C. Dowdle and R. Findlay
Film Club

Michel Hazanavicius’s OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

Film Club is proud to present tonight’s guest commentator, M. Aimeric Lajuzan, Upper School French teacher. M. Lajuzan graduated from the University of Toulouse, where he studied geography and sociology, and moved to the United States in 2006. This country is lucky to have him. The expertise of the French is well known, for there is nothing that they do not know, and their superiority, both intellectually and culturally, must be acknowledged. For example, the French have been the only people in the world sophisticated enough to recognize the comic genius in the films of Jerry Lewis. For this reason, we have asked M. Lajuzan to opine about tonight’s film.

OSS 117 is the best French parody of a spy movie ever made.

The last years of colonialism were a rough time for the best country in the world. The image of a unified French colonial empire harmoniously working to the beat of La Marseillaise was put to the test as local populations rose up to claim independence. The idea that millions of people around the world wanted to be French was fading and countries around the world emancipated following World War II. This part of History sets the scene for Michel Hazanavicius’s recent film OSS 117: Le Caire, Nid d’Espions, which portrays the adventures of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (UBDLB), special agent sent on a secret mission to Egypt for the glory of France and its (now completely forgotten) president René Coty.

UBDLB is not Austin Powers (Mike Myers’ character parodying James Bond and the mod England of the ‘60s) nor Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers’ bumbling character from Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films); he is Sean Connery … but French. He is incredibly self-confident, sexy, and smart; all these things that make us French so popular around the world. When information is faulty (wait! there are Muslims in North Africa?!?), he improvises and gets through problems unharmed. He might offend a person or two or twenty, but it is clear to any Frenchman that those people are just too sensitive. Everyone knows that no other civilization but the French has ever reached perfection, so why would they want to discuss it?

OSS 117 is best watched in French but for some reason there are people who don’t speak this beautiful language and need subtitles. (This is shameful. For centuries English kings spoke French. The founding fathers of the United States spoke French, which served well when they took field trips to France to get assistance in writing their little constitution and Bill of Rights. And you will notice that, in the movie, even the Nazis speak French. Is it too much to expect ordinary film-goers to have some respect and know this language?)

So enjoy this lampooning of French smugness movie in which French culture is captured so accurately and with such reverence. It may be the last time a movie does so.

Monsieur A. Lajuzan
Guest Film Club Commentator
SPA French Dept.

Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008)

I love being Scandinavian, especially when it comes to taking pride in my homeland. As a Swede, my people have conquered Europe and the North Atlantic as Vikings, made world-famous Swedish meatballs, and, pertaining to your cinematic experience tonight, produced one of the greatest kickassery vampire films ever.

Låt Den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One In), originally a novel, follows the struggle of a bullied twelve-year-old named Oskar (an extremely common Swedish name, think “John”). When Oskar comes home every day from school, he fantasizes about exacting revenge. One day, Oskar meets a pale (hint hint) girl about his age in appearance named Eli who is living with the man next door. Soon, the two pursue a close relationship.

Eli, who turns out to be a vampire and significantly older than twelve, proves to be in power fast. If you take only one thing away from this movie, remember that girls can wear the pants too. Think of Eli as a feminist superhero as you might Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Eihi Shiina in Audition, except slightly less realistic considering Eli commits murder after murder in order to survive off of the blood of her victims.

Tonight’s vampire in Let the Right One In holds many similarities to the ever so popular sparkly Twilight vampires, such as pale skin and the need for blood. Not only that, both Edward Cullen and Eli are mysterious, nice to look at, and stereotypically convince the opposite sex that they can never be together, which of course is completely untrue. Then why does Let the Right One In appeal to more than teenage girls? It doesn’t really matter what the story is about in my opinion, but rather how it is told. The romance in Let the Right One In is progressive, whereas the vampire in Twilight immediately decides he must be with the prettiest, dullest girl in school. Another appeal is the action in this film which may or may not make you terrified of little Scandinavian girls (watch out – you do live in the Midwest).

One of the most beautiful characteristics of this film is director Tomas Alfredson’s choice to focus on the relationship between Oskar and Eli rather than make it painfully violent like many American-made horror movies. Honestly, have you ever cared about any of the characters in a movie like Saw? Of course not, you don’t even know who those people are! The only thing you learn about them is their resistance to pain and how bad the actors portraying them are.

If you’re going to enjoy this movie as much as I do, let’s get some things straight: Do not watch the remake of this movie. Hopefully, you haven’t seen it, and if you are lucky, you never will see it. Let Me In, a 2010 American remake of the film you’re seeing tonight, did exactly what I hate about American horror movies. Director Matt Reeves took out the intimate components of human expression and threw in bad horror, along with introducing actors who got their roles because of their looks and not their talent. Stay true to the beauty of an original!

Finally, as you watch Let the Right One In, remember that good things are still coming out of Sweden besides music piracy websites and intense rave music. Just because we don’t participate in World Wars doesn’t mean we are not talented! För Sverige!

Njut!

August King
Film Club

Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001)

On a Saturday night, it is not unusual to find my family sitting together on a couch watching a movie. No, they usually aren’t in English. They’re in Hindi. No, they’re usually not intense dramas, but they include song and dance. Welcome to the world of Bollywood. My family will start the movie around 8 or 9 o’clock, a decent time (if we were watching something from Hollywood). But remember, this is Bollywood, where it is not unusual to find a movie that is three hours long. Tonight’s movie, Lagaan, is even longer.

In India, going to see a movie is an experience by itself. You buy the tickets ahead of time, because the theater fills up fast for a number of reasons. They don’t just serve popcorn there, but delicious Indian street food. And for those people who don’t have much money, a movie ticket is expensive. So the longer the film the more it seems like one gets one’s money’s worth. In addition, it can get quite hot in some places in India; a longer movie means more time in an air conditioned theater. Consequently, people don’t just treat going to a film as three hours well spent, but they consider it to be a day well spent.

Generally, each movie features five or six songs with choreographed dance. Often times, it is between a boy and a girl. These musical numbers tend to add on 25 or 30 minutes to the length. It is not enough for the girl to act like she’s happy with a boy, but she has to sing and dance to express her feelings.

For American audiences, the biggest challenge from Bollywood is probably the length of the film. Why is it like that? Is it the American film industry that has limited our attention span? Is 90 or 120 minutes really enough for the movie to say something?

Lagaan is trying to say something, but at 225 minutes it has a lot more time to say it. It is a typical sports “underdog” movie, but with so many more elements. Set in the time when the British are governing in India, it has a romantic triangle between a British girl, Indian boy, and Indian girl. All of this is going on, while there is pressure on the villagers to pay three times the tax to the British, or lagaan, if they don’t win a cricket match, a game that they don’t understand. As Bollywood-ish as the movie is, it comments on underlying issues in Indian society. The Caste system is a social hierarchy in India. While not as enforced today, it plays a big role in whether or not they should let an untouchable play cricket with them.

Lagaan can be regarded as a key player for the crossover of Bollywood movies to other parts of the world. The main actor of the movie, Aamir Khan, who has achieved critical success since then in acting and producing, has the kind of appeal that transcends regional tastes. As recognition of its crossover qualities, Lagaan was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in the 2002 Academy Awards. It didn’t win (the Bosnian film No Man’s Land took the award), but it was still a big step for India. I hope you enjoy tonight’s special Indian treat.

Aditi Kulkarni
Film Club

Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001)

I was in 2^nd grade when I first saw Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I watched it once with a friend, and after that day, we watched it once a week for the rest of the year. I loved Nausicaa. I still love it. And I love Miyazaki’s other films – Howl’s Moving Castle, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky, and My Neighbor Totoro. I also love Spirited Away.

There’s something about Miyazaki’s animation that is amazing. He captures image, character, and message perfectly. First off, the animation is beautiful – the emotions on the characters’ faces (and the way they open their mouths really wide when they laugh), the colors, the style of drawing. Whatever the subject or tone, the artistry of Miyazaki’s work suggests an underlying joy. It’s more than just pretty images, although some Miyazaki scenes are stunning in their visual detail. His animation lends the cartoon scenes and characters a sense of reality. Watch Nausicaa some time. I love taking in every detail of the toxic jungle. Miyazaki includes every leaf and water drop, and doesn’t miss a thing. The pictures on the screen seem so alive. I think some of this comes from its being hand-drawn. It’s lot of fun to watch.

Another very real part of Miyazaki’s films is the emotion. In a lot of films, especially cartoons, it’s hard to believe in the way the characters are feeling. But in movies like Spirited Away, the emotions are clear. Miyazaki captures them in facial expressions and in actions, but also through the careful use of music. The soundtrack adds a lot to the excitement or emotion-filled moments. One of the most vivid places where the music comes alive in Nausicaa is where Nausicaa comes racing out of the jungle chased by a toxic insect. The music soared and became more urgent, and my heart raced with excitement. In My Neighbor Totoro, the plip plip sounds of water dropping after the rainstorm at the bus stop adds an amazing awareness of the passage of time while Satsuki waits for the bus.

With a Miyazaki film, though, you get entertainment and more; you walk away from them with something other than just a good time. I particularly like the messages implicit in his movies, especially his attitude about the environment, a subject that is important to me. As you watch Spirited Away, think about what’s going on beyond plot and character. Think about what Miyazaki might be saying about growing up, about greed, about family. It seems like there is always a good message portrayed through all his movies.

Whenever Spirited Away is mentioned, whatever group of people I’m around, people say, “Oh, I watched that movie when I was eight and I got so scared!” They don’t realize that that’s the beauty of it. You can’t be scared of something you don’t think is real, like those obviously fake, rubber monsters in an old horror movie. But when Chihiro’s parents turn around to face her and they are pigs, it’s pretty terrifying. At least, to an eight-year-old. More terrifying is after that, when Chihiro runs through the city full of the unknown and she can’t find her parents because they aren’t there. The thought of being abandoned and alone without guidance is the scariest. And Chihiro’s terror is probably the most real moment in Spirited Away.

I hope that moment is still terrifying, even if you’re not eight years old. That would mean that Miyazaki has succeeded, both in entertaining you and in making you feel something important about growing up.

Kaia Findlay
Miyazaki Devotee

Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Nominated for eight Academy Awards, and winner of four Oscars including Best Picture, A Beautiful Mind is one of the foremost dramas of this millennium. The creation of director Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind debuted to widespread serious approval due to the depth of its screenplay (by Akiva Goldsman from a book by Sylvia Nasar), the brilliant performances of Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, and the in-depth portrayal of a victim of mental illness.

Russell Crowe's follow-up performance to blockbuster hits such as, LA Confidential and Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind is an astonishing trip into one man's delusional reality. As a mathematical genius, John Nash (Russell Crowe) enjoys the early achievement of a promising profession in academia. Able to solve mathematical theories that stump many of the greatest minds of his time, Nash’s true problem arises because of his mental illness. The reality in which he lives does not exist, and it threatens to tear apart his marriage, his career, and the very life which he holds dear. Crowe's one-of-a-kind depiction of the schizophrenic Nash and the beautiful Jennifer Connelly's performance as the woman who loves him are both complex, bolstered by an onscreen chemistry between Crowe and Connelly. Crowe especially is adept at revealing the many onion-like layers that Nash creates for all aspects of his life.

The cast and crew of A Beautiful Mind allow us to see a whole new world through the eyes of suffering genius. And Ron Howard has crafted an absorbing film which effectively blends the lines between the world in John Nash's mind and the real world, A Beautiful Mind eloquently depicts one man's struggle against enormous odds. As Nash's paranoia and figments of imagination join together to conceal the genius of Nash’s beautiful mind, the power of the human spirit rallies to great heights in this inspiring film, arguably one of the best films of the decade.

Billy Lutz
SPA Film Club

A Beautiful Mind falls into the honorable category of “biopic,” a film that tells the life story of a real person, emphasizing the facts. That’s not to say that biopic film-makers don’t bend a few realities in the name of dramatic narrative, but this is as close as Hollywood gets to non-fiction without being a documentary. Biopics earn respect in the industry, too. They challenge actors and give film-goers access to historical figures without turning the experience into lecture. Think of the recent or great biopics you might have seen: Gandhi (starring Ben Kingsley), X (Denzel Washington as Malcolm X), Ali (Will Smith), Frida (Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo), Ray (Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles), Beyond the Sea (Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin), Walk the Line (Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash), The Queen (Helen Mirren), Milk (Sean Penn) or Invictus (Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela). Many of these have been nominated for Academy Awards and often the actor won or was nominated as well. But how respectful are these sorts of films of the history they represent?

Tonight’s film takes us through the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a mathematical genius who struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. When the film came out, an argument ensued over screenwriter Goldsman’s somewhat cavalier use of his source material. Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the book, claimed Goldsman left out important parts of Nash’s life and fictionalized others. This is always the tension with major film biopics – the desire to both entertain and inform, to make a good story out of real life. Typically, we find that Hollywood will bend truth in order to provide entertainment, and so as we watch A Beautiful Mind, it’s important to keep in mind that the reality may not be exactly as it appears on the screen. Perhaps A Beautiful Mind, about a mathematician who has delusions, is our own delusion – we think we see John Forbes Nash, but we really just see Russell Crowe as a character that reflects a few of the moments of his life.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E (2008)

This year’s main theme is “post-apocalyptic visions,” films reflecting the human struggle that results from a past cataclysmic event, be it nuclear war or world pandemic or vanished resources. In deciding what films we would show this year, a lot came up that we would consider “apocalyptic,” those films that depict the cataclysm itself – the zombie attack, the tidal wave, the outbreak. And we rejected them, looking for films that had a little more to say about our world, even as they were depicting it in ruins.

We ask you to consider, briefly, the difference between the two types of movies. The Apocalyptic film is essentially a heroic tale – people faced with suddenly oppressive odds. Maybe they win, maybe they don’t, but the emphasis is on an ultimate struggle, a cosmic cage-match with the future going to the winner. The Post-Apocalyptic film, on the other hand, suggests that Man lost. While the heroes in Post-Apocalyptic films still struggle, still exhibit classic heroic traits, these films are more about social commentary. Take Road Warrior, George Miller’s bleak vision of a world in which civilization has collapsed and roving bands of violent thugs fight over scarce gasoline resources. Miller doesn’t even hint at what brought humanity to this point; instead, his film coldly suggests that faced with the crisis people reverted to selfishness, brutality, and sadism. Apocalyptic films tend to show people at their best; Post-Apocalyptic films tend to indicate that even if good people still struggle on, they tend to so against people at their worst.

What we find most compelling about these post-apocalyptic movies, like Franklin Schaffner’s original Planet of the Apes, Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessen, L. Q. Jones’ A Boy and His Dog, and Geoff Murphy’s The Quiet Earth, is their exploration of a world past the brink. These, like so many others in the genre, seem rooted in a fatal logic: we can’t remain civil toward one another if our basic comforts are removed. We might understand if the suddenly missing ingredient is, like, water. But it’s scarier to think that we might come to the same violent primitivism by the mere absence of something really mundane, like digital communication or something. The movies we’re showing this year that explore this speculative future provide a wide variety of possible cataclysms, but they’re almost uniformly pessimistic.

Even WALL-E, tonight’s first film in our “post-apocalyptic visions” series, despite being a light comedy for young people, relies on a darker criticism of human nature, positing that humanity has brought itself to a conclusion through its own devices, specifically the relentless pursuit of convenience and instant gratification. Think about that the next time you drive to Taco Bell so you can have dinner in your car. You will enjoy our intrepid little hero, a sentient garbage can, but it’s interesting that the hero in this film is not human; he’s cleaning up after them. Nor do the humans regain any sort of nobility. For them, it turns out, it’s essentially over. And now we can turn our attention to the far more efficient, and in the end human, robots that have inherited the earth. (Or if you’re watching Cameron’s apocalyptic Terminator films, it’s anti-human terror.) WALL-E, like so many other Post-Apocalyptic films, is a requiem. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if it truly is our future to end, not with a bang or a whimper, but with a whimper after the bang.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Kevin Spacey’s Beyond the Sea (2004)

Your Humble Commentator found himself, in the mid-1980s, at a party in Dinkytown, arguing with some guy about who was the greatest actor in Hollywood: Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Tootsie, Rainman) or Robert De Niro (The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, King of Comedy). Today, we think we’re blessed with an even wider array of choices – Kevin Spacey (whose film Beyond the Sea we’re screening tonight), Daniel Day-Lewis, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Don Cheadle all come to mind. In fact, we selected American Beauty, The Usual Suspects, and Beyond the Sea for inclusion in this year’s film series because of what Spacey in particular had made of them.

But is he the greatest? First, this begs the question of the criteria one uses to determine such irrelevancies. Allow us to suggest the following (and we’ll limit ourselves to male actors this time):

Losing oneself in a character – One of the most impressive aspects of watching a great actor is the amazement at seeing him or her completely morph from one role to the next, a “how’d he do that” moment. In 1985, for example, Daniel Day-Lewis made two movies, Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Laundrette and James Ivory's Room With a View. In one he played a gay punk London tough, in the other a pretentious uptight Edwardian aristocrat. And you could not tell it was the same actor. Wow.

Consistent greatness over time – this is hard. A lot of actors start well and then flame out or coast on their success (one might put Dustin Hoffman in this category). Others start out as two-dimensional and don’t mature into richer, more nuanced characters until later (Bill Murray comes to mind). Consistent greatness is a true achievement. Here Sean Penn is a great example, from his breakout role in Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) to the complex characterization in Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking (1995) to his most recent tour de force in the biopic Gus Van Sant's Milk (2008). There may be occasional duds, but he’s still got it.

Not falling into type – This is a killer if you’re going to be considered great – you can’t be the same person every time (Tom Cruise, we’re looking at you). You can’t make every character into you; you have to make yourself into the character. And you have to take risks with your audience’s and fans’ expectations. Is there a more experimental actor in Hollywood than Johnny Depp? You might think that his consistent choice of idiosyncratic literary characters – Hunter S. Thompson, Willy Wonka, Jack Sparrow, Ichabod Crane, Don Juan, James Barrie, The Mad Hatter – amounts to self-typing, but he’s too adventurous to let any one of those resemble another. Nor does a concern about his star status seem to affect his choices. In 2010: Tonto?

Making a lot out of a little – We love it when an actor doesn’t have a starring or major role and still makes a quality impression. We would go see any movie with Don Cheadle even if he was only on screen for a matter of minutes; he brings so many smaller characters to life: overconfident ex-con Maurice Miller in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), naively hopeful Buck Swope in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997), unintelligible Basher Tarr in Soderbergh's remake of Oceans 11 (2001), and corrupt Haitian official Henri Moore in Brett Ratner's otherwise forgettable heist film After the Sunset (2004).

So, given these criteria, how does Kevin Spacey stack up? Well, we’re going to leave that up to you. Suffice it to say, Spacey has assembled a body of work with which one can begin to make these sort of distinctions. He began his career with small but notable turns in films like Working Girl, Henry and June, and Glengarry Glen Ross. If you take Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995) as his first great film and run your finger down the list to what you consider his most recent superior work, do you cross into a second decade? Has he begun to coast? What about variety of roles? Are his characters distinct from one another? Does he take risks?

It’s hard to judge an actor on the basis of just three films, which is what Film Club limited itself to in selecting the stand-out works of Kevin Spacey, but we’re pretty impressed with the three we chose. And we leave it up to you, as you watch Spacey morph into 1950s and ‘60s singer and teen idol Bobby Darin in this musical biopic, to place Spacey in that pantheon of current great male actors. One more question: Does Spacey’s decision to use his own singing voice, as Joaquin Phoenix did in James Mangold's Walk the Line, move him up or down your list?

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet (2006)

What hath Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wrought? Nothing less than the American breakthrough of a whole genre of films at precisely the time that genre left its adolescence and reached full artistic maturity.

Time was you had to stay until very late at night to watch Chinese films (“Kung Fu Theater!”), raw stories of Shaolin temples destroyed by gangs of martial arts proficient and nunchakus-wielding or qiang-thrusting or sai-throwing gangs. Your hero often survived, but just barely, the only remaining member of his school, and it’s rare but efficient fighting method. Survived to recover and take on, usually single-handed the entire martial arts army of his school’s enemy. It was a sort of quest, a test of honor. This is the wuxia story.

You know wuxia. Perhaps you’ve seen Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, or Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair. If so, you’re already a Hong Kong martial arts film devotee. But if not, then Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the Zhang Yimou films that succeeded it – Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower – are all examples that have noticeable American releases. The form even has reached the parody level, as all genres do when their conventions become recognizable by a general populace: Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle. (Maybe a good choice for Film Club next year?)

Tonight’s film, The Banquet or, as it’s being renamed in America, The Legend of the Black Scorpion, has all the earmarks of traditional wuxia – a superior martial arts skill, a magical force such as the ability to move swiftly up walls, over water or through trees, the ability to control a variety of objects as precise weapons, and highly defined sense of honor even when faced with villains.

But The Banquet has one other interesting characteristic; it also falls into that oddball genre of “Shakespeare adaptation,” uniting it with such disparate films as Ten Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, Forbidden Planet, and West Side Story. The Banquet is a retelling of Hamlet, a young Emperor’s son is studying far from home (not at Wittenberg) but at a school for artists. When the Emperor is murdered, his brother ascends to the throne and sends troops to murder the prince. He survives and returns to the palace. In this story it is not his mother who has married the new Emperor as it is in Hamlet, but his former girlfriend. Trouble ensues.

Beautiful trouble. The Banquet may be one of the most beautiful films you ever see. It’s the kind of movie you walk out of actually wondering who the cinematographer is and whether you can buy a poster to hang on your dining room wall to make the room look better. Top quality Asian movies have looked great for years – think about Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, or Zhang Yimou’s Ju Dou, or Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host – and Feng Xiaogang’s film is no exception.

So, beauty. Shakespeare. Wuxia. This film has it all. Enjoy The Banquet. It’s a feast for your eyes.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Guillermo Del Toro was born on October 9, 1964 and raised a devout Roman Catholic. Del Toro started making movies when he was eight years old. When he was 21, he created and produced his first short film by the name of Doña Lupe. Afterward, he dedicated his life to learning about and designing special effects and costuming for eight years. When he was done with this, Del Toro helped to co-found the Mexican Film Festival and he started his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

His movies draw on a wide variety of genres and topics, ranging from being something like the fantasy movies that he is well known for, such as El Labertino del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), to the movies that are based on comic books, such as Hellboy and Blade II.

Guillermo Del Toro is best known in recent years in the United States for his work on Pan’s Labyrinth, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in the 2006 Academy Awards (losing to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others). Pan’s Labyrinth received this kind of attention due to the amazing cinematography, costume designs, and imaginative story telling that Del Toro made as the movie’s director and producer. It’s hard to imagine viewers not thinking of the image of the faun, or of “the Pale Man” who holds his eyes in the palms of his hands, when they remember Pan’s Labyrinth. But every image in the film is a stunning visual treat, like a Tim Burton movie but with gravitas.

Del Toro’s love of costume design and special effects is also apparent in some of the earlier movies in his career, such as Hellboy (2004). While much of the imagery comes from Mike Mignola’s original comic book, Del Toro gave Hellboy a darker edge to its surrealistic fantasy, a trait shared by Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s clear that Del Toro is fascinated by fantasy, comfortable with disturbing but beautiful visions. What’s interesting is that he can find these common elements in both action-oriented super-hero stories and thought-provoking historical fantasies.

Perhaps because of his distinctive vision, since the creation and release of Pan’s Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro has received many offers to work costuming or directing a variety of films but has turned many of them down. The ones that he turned down ranged from the serious, such as One Missed Call, to family movies like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and even some in between, like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and I am Legend. The reason that he turned all of these offers down was so that he could focus on writing and directing his newest release, Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), a film that has been almost as financially successful as the original Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth combined. (He has agreed to direct the upcoming film version of Tolkein’s The Hobbit.) As disturbing as Del Toro’s visions may be, they definitely are finding their audience.

Jackson Smith
Film Club Co-President