Movies in 2011 #6--13: catch-up post

My idea of posting something about each movie I saw this year bit the dust pretty early; I've been very busy at work this semester, so blogging has fallen by the wayside in general, and the movie posts dropped off (not counting the documentary "Wild China"). I'm itching to write more, but my work is paying off; I made a successful grant application that will allow me to hire a research assistant. Yay!

So here is my catch-up list:
#6 Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980 (dir: James Marsh)
#7 Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983 (dir: Anand Tucker)
I finished up the Red Riding trilogy of films on Netflix. Each films had a different director and a different film stock, but the sum of the parts was riveting. I went out and looked for the books by David Peace the films were inspired by, and found that he has written all his novels while living in Japan for the last thirteen years; his latest books are set in Tokyo during the Occupation after WWII. I've now read two of them.


#8 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (dirs. Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg)
This documentary about a year in the life of then 70-year old comedianne may not make you like her any more, but it certainly is engrossing for its portrait of a woman who broke into a men's field, paving the way for others, and who works incredibly hard. I ended up with some respect for her, even as I still dislike the style of comedy she practices (it's too much like some the boys' for my taste). The film itself, as a documentary portrait, is quite good, but was overlooked by the Oscars, of course.

#9 Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (dir. Errol Morris)
I want to see all of Errol Morris's films eventually, so I started with this one. I can't recommend it enough. Here's a review by A.O. Scott from the New York Times:


#10 Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh)
This one we saw in the cinema, and it was one of the best films of the year, in my mind. This absolutely lovely review is a great way to understand the qualities of the film:


#11 Ondine (dir. Neal Jordan)
While not one of Neal Jordan's best films, this is still a gorgeously filmed, enjoyable movie (see Colin Covert's review) not least for the sea and land that is Ireland's coast. I must go back!
#12 Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
I'd seen this in the movie theater when I was a teenager, and was creeped out by the scenes where a medium channels the murdered samurai to tell his own story, but I wanted to see it again because I was reading David Peace's Tokyo: Occupied City, which uses some of the structure of Rashomon to bring in various voices recounting a crime.

#13 Even the Rain (También la lluvia, dir. Iciar Bollain)
While this film may seem overly didactic to some, I loved it. With a screenplay by Paul Laverty, whose work with Ken Loach has always been politically challenging (Carla's Song, Bread and Roses, The Wind that Shakes the Barley), it is an absolutely tremendous meditation on colonialism, then and now, and a brilliant portrayal of the "guerra del agua" or water wars in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000. The scenes of popular mobilization, of crowds occupying the city and blockading the roads, of police repression, of seeking a family member victim of violence during the crackdown, are all doubly significant in light of what has been going on in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya in these past weeks: "people power" is an incredible force, and the courage it takes to put your body on the line when faced with well-armed troops is incredible.

The overlay of contemporary neo-liberal colonialism on the stories of Columbus, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, and Fray Antón de Montesinos, and the recreation of scenes of the Spaniards' horrific treatment of the Taínos, work extremely well. One of the best scenes is most powerful for what it does not portray; when the film's director Sebastian tries to get the women extras to enact drowning their children to escape the Spaniards' huge dogs (with the help of dolls), the women simply refuse. It helps that the cast is uniformly brilliant. Gael García Bernal will be more well-known to American audiences, but Luis Tosar (who was so convincing in Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos) is the core of the film, in tandem with Juan Carlos Aduviri who plays Daniel/Hatuey, a local man who is cast as as the Taíno hero Hatuey and who is also a leader in the struggle over water rights. Their scenes together are incredibly powerful.
Here's an interview with Paul Laverty that I love for his accent alone!