Benad's Blog

This is part 4 of 12 of my retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s career.

At last Stanley Kubrick was able to independently make a movie on his own. Also, from this point on, all of his movies are part of the Stanley Kubrick Collection DVD Set I acquired many years ago.

As you can expect, he had to do something controversial by commissioning Vladimir Nabokov to adapt his book “Lolita” into a screenplay. How can a movie released in the early 60s in England have as its main subject pedophilia?

Unlike his previous movies, the cinematography is subdued. There are some interesting sets, like the prologue (and conclusion) and the high school dance, but otherwise the imagery is somewhat bland. What shines though is the screenplay and acting.

Given the taboo subject matter, even with the subtle change of age of Lolita from 12 to 14, nothing is explicitly or implicitly shown. Also, everything related to sexual matters are told by double meanings. But this gives a great chance for the actors to play out not only these, but various kinds of misunderstandings and lies.

It is quite clear that the characters are not shown into under sympathetic light. Quite on the contrary, the main character and pedophile Dr. Humbert is shown in a half pathethic and comedic way by the childish way he falls in love with Lolita. And she doesn’t escape either, since she ends up doing the first seduction move consentually. Actually, all the main characters are shown to be weird, messed up and ridiculous. Charlotte, the mother of Lolita, is shown as a controlling mother and desperate at seducing Humbert. Peter Sellers as Quilty is downright creepy.

James Mason does a tour de force as Dr. Humbert, acting as a strange, romantic and nervous writer. While there is some narration done by Mason, most of the acting is done through dialogue, with Dr. Humbert struggling between is inner feelings and what he has to expose to others. A note has to be made of the very good music, which seems to present the inner emotions of Dr. Humbert in many scenes, with undertones of ridicule.

The only criticism I could make is that, while the dialog and acting are good, the movie is a little bit too long at over 150 minutes. Compared to the tight pacing of Spartacus, Lilita felt slow at times. Otherwise, this is a great showcase of good writing and acting that will make you cringe and smile.

This is part 3 of 12 of my retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s career.

At this time of the year, like clockwork, TV stations present Ben-Hur (and The Ten Commandments) due to its Judeo-Christian undertones. So of course I find it fitting to watch the “like that but better” movie Spartacus, instead with undertones of Communism.

Event though this is not a Kubrick movie per se, since Kubrick was a “for hire” directorial replacement by producer and lead actor Kirk Douglas, you can still feel his directorial presence. His signature precision, plays with shadows and out-of-focus foreground objects are all there. This movie is in color though, and it has superb color aesthetics, with many outside scenes filmed at dawn or sunset (the Criterion Edition’s color restoration really shines). Of course Kubrick prefers indoor sets, and Kubrick lets those incredible sets be properly displayed in the frame.

Oh, I forgot to mention the story. It’s about Spartacus leading a slave rebellion in Roman times, which had incidental effects on the rise of Crassus and Julius Caesar. It includes some epic battle scenes, great chemistry between Kirk Douglas as Spartacus and the female lead Jean Simmons, great acting by Peter Ustinov, and a long but well-paced 192-minutes story.

While it may not have been a long-term success like Ben-Hur, in my opinion it has a better, darker and more realistic story that ended up influencing recent movies like Bravehart and Gladiator. It also had a great influence at removing the anti-Communist blacklist of McCarthy in Hollywood. So, at 30, Kubrick had the balls to be able to direct for-hire a massively big and controversial movie, and I think that his atraction to controversial movies was just starting.

At its core, Rango is a western movie. Yes it stars a pet chameleon that gets lost on a desert highway, and finds himself in a western town that is going through a drought. (Yes, World Water Day was yesterday, but that was only a coincidence.) Beyond that though, it is a superb animated movie by Industrial Light and Magic, worthy of its Oscar.

The movie is not simply a sequence of jokes loosely tied together with a story. While the odd storytelling style threw me away for the first fifteen minutes or so, I was hooked by the strong story for the rest of the movie. The voice acting, led by Johnny Depp, is excellent, again much more than stars attaching their names to a movie for the sake of the posters.

And I cannot praise enough the quality of the animation. It is not only well used to tell the story, but at times you are presented with poetic animation that will take your breath away. So, yes, you must see this in HD.

Overall, I highly recommend this movie, even if you don’t particularly like westerns or animated movies.

This is part 2 of 12 of my retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s career.

World War I; 1916; the French army. A suicide mission; a court marshall for cowardice; blackmail.

Paths of Glory, based on the book of the same name, has a strong anti-war message done convincingly. The movie presents arguments through both riveting action sequences and displaying the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the French generals. Oh, and Stanley Kubrick was only 28.

Even if the script is mostly dialog and acting driven, you can see Kubrick’s great attention to visual detail, all to support the story. For example, you can clearly feel the difference between the dirtiness of the war and the soldiers baracks compared to the beautiful and lavish castles of the generals. In a way, the sets became almost an additional actor, clearly taking screen time and setting the mood. The camera doesn’t overly move outside of the action scenes, with objects and people carefully choreographed in the foreground and background. The sets and costumes feel incredibly authentic.

Of course, the acting is impeccably directed, and for a movie with such a strong message I was surprised to see that none of it felt “over acted”. Kubrick also kept actors from faking French accents, though in their acting you can clearly feel they are French.

As for the story itself, it was both shocking and moving, with a tight pacing from beginning to end. For a movie with such amount of dialogue and even a trial, it never felt slow, stretched out or boring. Put another way, even though it could have been quite “intellectual” the movie is quite accessible even for today’s audiences.

Overall, this is an amazing movie about World War I, and against war in general. That Kubrick was able to pull it off at such a young age is quite an achievement.

This is part 1 of 12 of my retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s career.

While this is not Kubrick’s directorial debut, it is his first praised movie, so this is where I’ll start. It is difficult to review this movie on its own merits rather than blindly praising it based on the director’s future works, so I’ll have to review it as if it was simply another “film noir” from his time. Which is still difficult, considering I don’t particularly like film noir nor heist stories.

The movie is quite short (barely 90 minutes), and even then, the first half of the movie is quite slow. The scenes are moody, both from the corny dialog and good cinematography and lighting. Many of the actors are quite stiff, though that may have been the norm for the style and times.

The movie picks up drastically in the second half where the heist takes place, and this is when it fully lives up to our expectations for both a heist movie and a dark movie. The narration, jumping a little bit forwards and back in time, works very well. The pacing is amazing and doesn’t waste any time. Oddly enough, the acting that was stiff in the first part changes to something far more nuanced and interesting.

So, it’s a well directed and well-told story, and you don’t need to be a fan of the genre to appreciate it.

This drama and comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen tells the difficult story of a young man that got a spinal cancer. By “difficult” I meant also how difficult it is to tell such a story without falling in over-the-top acting and melodrama. Also, with Seth Rogen, you might expect crass humor throughout. Yet, it has all of these (drama, acting and crass humor), but with great tact and balance. In fact, the tone of the movie was amazing and never felt too emotionally heavy or light.

In a strange way, it all felt “real”. JGL’s acting really felt like this happened in real life to him rather than “I must act like I’m dying to get awards”. Even his mother played by Anjelica Houston, whom I normally dislike in her over-the-top style, felt like a real mother.

Well, maybe it’s because it’s based on the life of the writer (Will Reiser) whom was real-life friends with Seth Rogen when he got cancer. I think it really shows that this was written from authentic personal experiences rather than imagining what it’s like to get cancer at that age. And we all get the wiser from watching.

Now that I finished watching the Harry Potter movies, my next “movie cycle” will be to see the movies of acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick. I already saw almost all of his movies already, but not in sequence like that, so that will be interesting to see his directorial progression.

The only movie of his I haven’t seen, apart from a few unimportant early movies in his career, is “The Killing”. I won’t have to hunt down this DVD though, because it is both available on Netflix and iTunes. For the rest, I have the original DVD box set of Kubrick’s movies from Lolita to Eyes Wide Shut, and I got separately the DVDs of Paths of Glory and Spartacus, so I’m all set.

In addition, I’ve never read Kubrick’s script of Napoleon, a movie that may have been too ambitious even for him. On the blog of The Mystery Man on Film there is also an insightful series of articles about Napoleon that too will read as if that was some kind of commentary track on a movie never made.

Now, I am currently more busy than usual, so it could take a few months to go through all the movies.

Shutter Island, the 2010 Martin Scorsese movie, is a very effective detective and horror movie. While the story itself is not the greatest, it is brilliantly executed by Scorsese. Its many accolades and nominations are well deserved, be it for the art direction, acting, music, sets and so on. DiCaprio outdoes himself in this movie rather than just being there for his looks or name.

Halfway through the movie it reminded me a bit of Hitchcock’s own movies, in which so much rested on his great ability to set the mood through every single thing on screen, yet all subdued to the narrative. In effect, he turned relatively average books into captivating and engaging movies. Few directors can be compared to Hitchcock for thrillers and suspense, and yet Scorsese did it.

So, yes, go out and rent or buy this movie if you’re fed up with franchises, sequels and movies that rely too much on star power. Well, unless you’re scared too easily.

Three things jumped at me when I watched the movie Drive, by little-known Danish director Refn. First, Ryan Gosling’s performance is amazing. Second, the 80’s-style new-retro soundtrack is also amazing. Third, each shot is beautifully framed, and amazing too.

I was putting off watching that movie for the longest time, ignoring the critics' praises, since for some reason I kind of dislike Gosling. Also, I knew that the trailers were not representative of the movie and that it wasn’t a “Fast and Furious” kind of action movie, but then that made me even more cautious since I didn’t knew what to expect either.

In the end, it is an action-thriller with a few car chases here and there but with a lot of other action scenes too. As a warning, some of the action is quite brutal, and even if I was warned about it I was still shocked. Yet, it is rare to see such a kind of action movie with such a great direction and acting. The acting direction is excellent, making each actor greatly contrast each other. At the central point, Gosling’s character is mostly stoic, yet he does so not out of bad acting but by acting out of amazing subtlety. As I mentioned earlier, each shot is amazingly beautiful, in the palette of colors, the framing, and the near-perfect camera control. Oh, and the eclectic 80s soundtrack fits perfectly and will move you.

So, go watch it. That movie actually deserves more hype.

First, you have to admit that there is quite an uneven quality to the movies. While this is partly due to the changing tone of the original material, it is even more so due to the various drastic directorial changes in art direction. Because of that, even a casual viewer will end up with far-ranging opinions when comparing the movies to each other.

At the offset it is quite clear that the first movie had an enormous budget, and the following movies had the same budget bloat. The total budget well exceeds one billion US dollars. With that in mind, was it worth it? I'm not too sure. Yes, Harry Potter had a great cultural impact, but now that it's been a few years since the last book was published I wonder how quickly the series will disappear of our culture's consciousness beyond a few cultural references. Also, it too often felt like the movies were at the service of the books to promote them rather than being works of art on their own.

As an example, parallels can be made to the Lord of the Rings. The original books were panned by critics, and their objections are quite understandable: The first third of the first book has a jarring childish style compared to the rest, the books are filled with opaque references to imagined cultures and languages, the split up narrative between the hobbits and the humans doesn't work too well, and so on. Yet, the books organically grew in popular culture for decades, and when Peter Jackson's movies were released they were quite simply homages to the books. The movies were not only epic in scale but skillfully done, warranting the countless Oscars they received.

Per movie Harry Potter was done with the same budget as the Lord of the Rings, and there is no contest on which will have a more lasting impact in our culture as standalone works. It is as if even if the Harry Potter movies were made by its greatest fans, the source materials remain too shallow for the commercial scale that was expected out of it.

In short, while enjoyable, you can skip altogether Harry Potter and not miss much. Now, should I watch all those extra features on the disks?