The perfect movie for the holidays

Whenever you want entertaining life lessons, you turn to one person and that is...

Yep, Woody pretty much knows it all. Although my absolute favorite of his is Annie Hall (quite easily), around Christmas, there's a movie I just cannot miss and that is...

Hannah and Her Sisters, the bittersweet masterpiece is just the perfect holiday movie. It's a brilliant summary of life, our world as well as the best movie of the eighties (for me). Now I've seen it 8 times (counting the one two hours ago).

The movies chapters all offer different views and perspectives of life that get even richer and richer at each viewing. It's marvelous to me how Woody's brilliance truly unfolds to me over the years, since there are so many aspects of his movies that I become fascinated by. Things that I previously barely noticed or even ignored. 

This year, for me, that is the wonderful, stunning visuality of the movie. People so easily ignore the visuality of "small" movies like the ones made by Woody. The cinematography of Carlo Di Palma is just stunning and its best proof is the lunch of the three sisters. The way the camera gazes at the expressions of the sisters combined with the fabulous performances that these three ladies give and the flawless directing is an unforgettable experience.

Hannah's worries, Holly's nervousness and Lee's shame are all perfectly captured. It's like looking into three different souls at the same. Although Dianne Wiest was the one winning the Oscar (and deservedly so, she's my favorite winner in that category), the two other sisters are not less brilliant than she is. Barbara Hershey's performance is incredibly painful, but also uplifting, making her probably the emotional core of the story. Mia Farrow does an amazing job holding the movie together with her character: it's so easy to ignore her merits in the movie, but once you've seen this film many times, you recognise the amazing job that she does here. And no words are necessary to describe Dianne Wiest: she's the one you relate to, the easiest person to love in this whole story, despite playing a neurotic mess. The way Wiest portrays how Holly longs for love is just amazing and makes this character so relatable (her scene in the cab is one of the greatest ones ever made). 

Hannah and Her Sisters give us scenes from life tha feel so close and real to what we experience every day. One says you watch a movie to escape reality and to see something different as Haneke says "24 lies per second". But as Woody proves it, it can be "the truth, 24 frames per second", Hannah and Her Sister is a mirror in which we can all observe our lives and what we know and think about this world. And that's the best thing one can get at Christmas or any time of the year. 

Happy Holidays once again! :)

INSIDIOUS

Written by Leigh Wannell

Directed by James Wan

Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne and Barbra Hershey

I hate to be the guy who does this but as I had to look it up before watching the movie, I feel justified in saying that if you look up “insidious” in the dictionary, you will learn that it means proceeding in a gradual, subtle way but with harmful effects. And so INSIDIOUS, director James Wan’s first hit since he exploded in blood-soaked glory onto the horror scene with SAW in 2004, is aptly named. Wan slowly draws you into his hyper-stylized haunted house and those harmful effects I mentioned, they begin to take hold.

The trouble with paranormal based horror films is that their build is usually intense and potentially brilliant but their reveal is ordinarily ridiculous. INSIDIOUS begins with great promise. The low lighting, bizarre imagery and frighteningly sharp score pull you into the nervous energy that permeates the walls of the house in question. A new family has just moved in and the lack of familiarity itself is a device to cause more anxiety in the characters. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne play parents to young Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who has seemingly fallen into a coma after a mysterious experience in the attic. As it turns out though, it is Dalton, and not the house, that is haunted and unfortunately, the means with which Dalton’s rescue is orchestrated, which I will not spoil for you here, change the tone of the film so greatly that the subtlety required for it to live up to its name is all but lost completely.

That said, just because I wasn’t convinced does not mean that many believers out there will not be fully taken with INSIDIOUS. When it comes to the paranormal, you either believe or you don’t and it should be the filmmaker’s job to change the mind of even the most ardent of non-believer. While that didn’t happen for me here, I can say that the film gave me chills on more than one occasion. In fact, I had to distract myself when watching, which could mean that I’m not at all interested but in this case, it just meant that I was too scared to look.

BLACK SWAN

Written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder

Thomas Leroy: Perfection is not just about control. It is also about letting go.

From my understanding, to be a true ballerina, one must always strive for perfection. Your toes, your torso, your lines must be just so. If you’re serious about ballet, you might be lucky enough to join a company. Only a select few get to be company soloists though. And so, lightly prancing about beneath the stage at any given ballet, you will find dozens of girls all striving toward an unattainable goal - some starving themselves and some hoping the soloist will take a bad fall and need replacing at the last second. It’s a microcosm, ripe with potential for drama and madness, making it the perfect setting for Darren Aronofsky’s latest, BLACK SWAN.

At the film’s start, a single spotlight rises on two feet, tightly wound in the tiniest of slippers. They begin to dance and as they land one after the other, we can see how delicate ballet is and how tortuous it must be to make it look that good. When the camera pulls away to reveal that these feet do in fact belong to Natalie Portman, it is clear just how much grace she will bring to this film. And by the time a beastly creature makes itself known to this frightened dancer, it is clear that Aronofsky is about to, yet again, give us something unlike anything else he’s done.

Portman is Nina, a dancer with the New York City Ballet who has just been cast as the Swan Princess in the upcoming production of “Swan Lake”. To do so in exactly the manner her director (Vincent Cassel) demands, she must embody the spirit of both the white and the black swan. Yes, the thematic conflict for this character is obvious at this point but Aronofsky tells it with complex visual style that jetés between jarring and captivating. And Portman, who has reportedly been in dance lessons since she was a toddler, knows the pressure of the dancer. She is to tightly wound that by the time her dark side begins to show its face, we are just as ready to release as she is. It certainly doesn’t help matters that her mother (Barbara Hershey) pressures her to succeed, a new dancer (Mila Kunis) wants her spot and the soloist she replaced (Winona Ryder) wants her just plain gone.

BLACK SWAN is as theatrical and as dramatic as any ballet that I’ve seen performed on stage. Aronofsky directs but, from behind the camera, he dances alongside the dancers as if he was part of the choreography, forming some hybrid of dance and film that begs repeat performances. It also warrants a resounding standing ovation.