• _Sicario_ and the films of Denis Villeneuve

    From septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to All on Sat Mar 5 21:15:49 2016
    Emily Blunt, who plays the protagonist in _Sicario_, gets an
    appropriate introduction. She and her fellow heavily armed
    law enforcement officers buckle-up in an armored vehicle that
    looks a better fit for Iraq than Arizona. The truck rams through
    a dry wall, surprising and overpowering the Mexcian drug cartel
    operatives inside. Our heroine, and the actress playing her,
    are indeed blunt instruments. The English actress has trained
    herself into a convincing action heroine (see the "full metal
    bitch" in _Edge of Tomorrow_). I hope she succeeds, if only
    to displace the callow Scarlett Johansson.

    As the film progresses, she is increasingly a bewildered
    spectator. She is the token local representative in a hushed-up
    Mexican-border drug war that has brought in CIA advisors,
    special forces, and all the lack of accountability associated
    with both. Unable to exercise her muscles or her charm, Blunt
    is increasingly out of her depth. Towards the end the film
    does a switch-and-bait, suddenly turning to the solitary
    avenger Benicio Del Toro as the audience's empowered surrogate.
    How many root for him to pull a Jack Bauer, single-handedly
    storming the hideout of the Mexican drug kingpin, executing the
    latter's wife and children before killing him? I did. That's one
    problem with the film.

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    It has been a long time since I saw Denis Villeneuve's
    _Maelstrom_, in my view still the director's best film.
    Marie-Josee Croze plays a privileged, spoiled young woman
    who has an abortion and then a hit-and-run on a fish monger.
    She is physically and spiritually rescued by the dead
    man's son, who forgives her. (A dead fish narrates the
    story too, giving it a touch of Kafka.) One wishes _Sicario_,
    which Villeneuve did not write, has more of the forgiving
    flavor. But above all one wishes it has Marie-Josee Croze,
    who has cornered the market on playing really interesting,
    morally ambiguous female characters.

    Even when she plays a straight woman's role, like her cameo
    as a religious wife who survives her husband's death by
    traffic accident, she elevates the film immeasurably.
    _Calvary_ is a terrific film about a down-to-earth priest
    willingly paying for the sins of his church. It depicts the
    best and worst of Catholicism, in its even-handed, tragic-comedic
    way. Brendon Gleeson is terrific as the priest, and Kelly
    Reilly is wonderful as his daughter (prior to his being
    ordained), even if she has the worst haircut of any Londoner
    I know. Director John Michael McDonagh is the real star of
    _Calvary_ though, creating a funny, heart-felt film without
    a drop of false sentimentality or lurid overkill. Villeneuve
    could use less lurid overkill. Amy Nicholson's reviews
    accuses _Sicario_ of being more in love with corpses than
    living people.
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    The best written character in _Sicario_ is Josh Brolin's
    "Matt." He wears flip-flops, banters with special forces
    in his jokey drawl, but is a deadly bureaucratic infighter.
    He exemplifies every upper-management ladder-climber who
    acts like he is above the law, is oblivious to anything
    other than results that will land him a promotion. Worse,
    he thinks everyone is exactly like him. We all know
    management-type like that.

    -------------------------------------------------------

    Josh Brolin is in Spike Lee's remake of _Oldboy_. That
    reminds me that Villeneuve's _Incendies_ could be called
    _Oldgirl_, for its lurid incest/imprisonment story. Was
    Villeneuve trying to make himself an honorary Korean
    filmmaker? (I haven't seen his _Prisoners_. I heard it
    has more than its share of imprisonment and torture. I
    wonder if the torture quotient isn't the reason Korean
    films are so popular in the art-house/film-festival circuit
    in this Decade and a Half of Humiliation.) The
    plot makes no sense at all. Why would a mother send her
    two children to the Middle East, where they could easily
    get killed, to solve her life story, when she could have
    simply told them the truth (posthumously or otherwise)?
    _Incendies_ is the last film Villeneuve wrote. His writing
    has gone downhill fast after _Maelstrom_.

    -------------------------------------------------------

    I haven't seen _August 32th on Earth_ or _Polytechnique_.
    By far the worst film of Villeneuve's I've seen is _Enemy_.
    Technically it is quite accomplished, like his other films;
    it has a definite point of view and lighting/color scheme
    to match. It is just that the point of view is so toxic.
    The "enemy" here is clearly not Jake Gyllenhaal's
    doppelgangers, but Women. The film begins (and probably
    ends) in a sex-club for men. Big ugly spiders repeatedly
    show up, as metaphors for women and their sexual appetites.
    The two Gyllenhaal girl friend/wife are implied to be
    interchangeable. Melanie Laurent, phenomenally expressive
    and warm, is badly misused and miscast as a cold fish/bitch,
    while Sarah Gadon, who stars in several Cronenberg films,
    plays another blond cold bitch, pregnant into the bargain,
    just to make her more oppressive to the male protagonists.
    Villeneuve did not write the film; the screenplay is adapted
    from José Saramago, a Nobel Prize winner. (Why hasn't Tom
    Stoppard won the prize when misogynist pigs who write such
    screamingly obvious "puzzles" can win theirs?) Cronenberg
    is probably a model for _Enemy_. Villeneuve is set to
    direct the _Blade Runner_ reboot. Let's hope it has more
    Ridley Scott and less Cronenberg. (I vote for a lot more
    John Michael McDonagh.)

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