Screen Rush is the blog of film critic and journalist Eric Kohn, whose work regularly appears in indieWIRE, New York Press, Filmmaker, Moviemaker, Heeb Magazine and a half dozen other outlets. A true twenty-first century movie buff, his writing centers around the impact of new media on the moving image, the changing face of film criticism, and the tempestuous relationship between pop culture and independent artistry. This site includes links to his recently published work and allows for additional thoughts on cinema's modern state. E-mail Eric at erichkohn(at)gmail(dot)com.
My Cannes review of InglouriousBasterds, which appeared for a second time in IndieWIRE this week, brought back memories of a busy week. I reviewed around two dozen movies at Cannes this year, leading to the sort of hectic deadlines that a newsroom usually only reaches in the wake of a national catastrophe. Information moves fast these days, particularly in the ever-transient world of the festival circuit, where a big movie on one day becomes history by the next. I tapped out my late morning reaction to Basterds shortly after the 8:30 a.m. press screening, finishing it up while Tarantino and Brad Pitt still had a few minutes to go in the press conference a few feet away.
Writing these sort of instant reactions provides a unique experience each time. I won’t deny that there’s a sheer thrill involved in capturing critical ephemera in the precise moment they come together, but I don’t want to discredit the value of taking time to deliberate over one’s feelings to deliver a thoughtful analysis. As it happens, upon returning to my Basterdsreaction on Tuesday, I found little about my opinion that I would change, although I could have used some extra time to refine a few of the ideas. I do think the movie relies too heavily on dialogue that’s rarely as clever as Tarantino intends for it to be, and that the espionage plot drags near the middle (even in the post-Cannes cut, which I saw a few days ago). It may have been a good idea to answer some of the questions I posed in the final graf: Why does Tarantino do this or that? Well, because he wants to. As an auteur, Tarantino embodies the “want to” tendencies, truly becoming a kid in the candy store of cinema pastiche. Generally, that’s been enough for me. Here, I’m mixed.
I think the first third of Basterds moves quite efficiently, and I even found the documentary tangents and the Western soundtrack a lot more entertaining on my second viewing. I should have focused more clearly on the strength of Christoph Waltz’s performance, as he’s probably the only believable persona in the whole movie, even when he chooses to go over the top. But nothing in Basterds matches the genuine flow of Pulp Fiction or near-perfect blend of homage and new age spectacle that Tarantino accomplished with the Kill Bill movies. Basterds has some strong moments, but it’s real accomplishment has less to do with its cinematic merits than the implications of its radical climax. (See my cover story in the current issue of Heeb if you want to know more.) Of course, since I’m not a major Basterds defender, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a deeper analysis of the film. As the not-so-subtly-disguised commenter “jeffreichert9” points out on the page where my review has been posted, this essay offers some interesting thoughts.
I became a fan of Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? after reading it in college. Here was a fast-paced story about of the big-time movie mogul archetype rooted in a poor Jewish upbringing in the Lower East Side. The Sammy Glick persona got to the root of the pratfalls involved in a relentless drive to succeed at all costs. Glick represented the danger of the movie business in its vastly seperate goals from the ones of those who seek to make movies as art. I grew obsessed with the numerous failed attempts to turn Sammy into a modern feature. Ben Stiller would have done a fine job; ditto Sidney Lumet. Alas, the only screen interpretation of Sammy was a not-bad TV movie that just hit DVD this year. At any rate, I did write a story about the Sammy saga for The Forward in 2007, and managed to reach Budd at his home office (his son Benn was kind enough to make that happen). Budd was funny, thoughtful and eloquent, though a bit hard to hear. He was 92 and had clear memories of watching silent movies in the twenties. With his death this week at 95, we lose another showbiz veteran with a full head of memories surveying Hollywood’s ups and downs. “Nice work,” he told me at the conclusion of our interview, but he might have been talking to himself.
I’ve spoken to Harold Ramis on a couple of occasions in recent years and have always found him insightful in a warm and fuzzy way. Chatting with the guy, his humble philosopher vibe grows infectious. It’s like second nature to him. I’ve had discussions with Ramis about Buddhism and his interests in the teachings of Rabbi Irwin Kula, then shifted gears to discuss Ghostbusters, and the conversational strand remains equally stimulating.
Let’s face it: As a director, he’s had a rocky career, but a fascinating one. While I would rather forget my experience watching his latest feature, Year One, the premise — and, of course, the man behind it — were compelling enough that I eagerly took the opportunity to interview Ramis for New York‘s Vulture blog. I’m en route to the Nantucket Film Festival this weekend, where Ramis is receiving a screenwriting award, and hope to follow up with him while I’m there. But the conversation we had the other day was pretty satisfying by itself.
Along with Year One, we also touched on the Ghostbusters sequel that’s in development and the new game, which I had the chance to play last night on my Wii. Although I hit a snag after an hour or so, in general the experience successfully engendered a rush of nostalgia, as it allowed me to get completely submerged in the universe of the first two movies. Ramis and his colleagues voiced the original characters, and the game truly feels like it could have been made in mid 1980’s, when it’s set. The writing is particularly strong in an old-school way and littered with nifty NYC references. The gameplay is great in the company of other Ghostbusters fans: There’s something delightfully geeky about playing in two player mode, waving a Wii remote alongside your buddy and wondering what’ll happen if the two of you cross the streams.
Now, if you’ll excuse me — my PKE meter‘s off the hook.
I covered the Cannes Film Festival this year for several outlets, giving me the opportunity to record my thoughts on pretty much everything I encountered there. Here’s the second in a series of posts recapping my experience.
After the festival tenderly began with Pixar’s Up, things quickly started to get a little crazier, a littler sexier, a little bloodier.
By the end of the second day, I was reporting for The Wrap on two features “with explicit and controversial subject matter”:
“Spring Fever,” a romantic drama from daring Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye, focuses on a woman who hires a private investigator to follow her husband as he engages in an affair with a man. The movie contains multiple scenes of explicit gay sex, not to mention a dense, hardly decipherable plot and monotonous performances…The other provocative offering that has unspooled here at the beginning of the festival, Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst,” offers a lot more to write home about. The director of such bloody modern cult classics as “Oldboy” makes an altogether twistedly satisfying contribution to the vampire genre with his latest work.
A few days later, I caught Brillante Mendoza’s divisive Kinatay, which hardly any journalists liked. In Moving Pictures, I expressed appreciation for Mendoza’s skill, but questioned his motives:
To be fair, there’s a lot more going on in the movie than sheer exploitation; in fact, it’s a class act as far as temporal experiences go, with elaborate sequences unfolding over lengthy periods where little happens other than that a fully formed environment emerges on the screen…But this conceptual extraction only becomes apparent once the credits roll. There’s a lot of stomach-churning involved in getting there, and at whose expense? Intellectual revelations notwithstanding, Kinatay is principally an ambitious form of cinematic masturbation.
Eventually, it became clear that Cannes 2009 was a year marked by cinematic violence. But who’s the goriest filmmaker at the fest? I explored that question for The Wrap, and concluded that it’s Park. “When it comes to gore, it is not in there because of some impulsive decision,” he told me in an interview. “It has been predetermined. If it has any adverse effects at the end of the day, I don’t have any excuses.” Read more here.
I covered the Cannes Film Festival this year for several outlets, giving me the opportunity to record my thoughts on pretty much everything I encountered there. Here’s the first in a series of posts recapping my experience.
The 3-D glasses handed out for viewing ‘Up’ at Cannes.
Cannes’s opening night film, Up, predictably left no one dissatisfied. As opening night films go, this one was a rare crowd-pleaser. I reviewed it for Moving Pictures:
Complex by way of simplicity, the latest narrative marvel from the immaculate factory of Pixar Animation Studios is the ideal choice to open the Cannes Film Festival. Considering its palatial façade as a beacon to cinema in all its capacities, Cannes can easily rely on Up to illustrate the range of pleasures associated with the art form (unlike previous opening night offenders such as Blindness and The Da Vinci Code). Guided by an insightful screenplay co-written by director Peter Docter (Monsters, Inc.), the movie wraps a sensational magic realism around authentic characters. That remarkable duality has long served as the Pixar touch. While hardly perfect, Up remains utterly satisfying on the level of the smart entertainment expected of its creators.
The next day, I caught Francis Ford Coppola’s latest independent effort, Tetro, which wound up as the opening film of the festival’s Directors Fortnight sidebar. While not blown away by it, I do think there’s plenty admire about this expressive, quasi-autobiographic family drama.
From my indieWIRE review:
Neither complete misfire nor triumphant return to form, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro” works as a competent family drama right up until the messy final act. If a first-time filmmaker had directed this stylish black-and-white-and-sometimes-color melodrama, it might gain some notice for suggesting great things to come. Instead, on its own terms, the movie is only a mildly interesting entry in Coppola’s thirty-plus years of work.
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