Brooklyn Rail. Feb 08.

"What aberration allows bad artists to make terrific films?" asks John Yau in the latest issue of the Brooklyn Rail. "Why is it that the clichés that make for turgid art become acceptable and engaging when they are translated into celluloid? I am thinking of Julian Schnabel and Jean Cocteau, who, besides being self-aggrandizing artists who have made interesting films (all of Schnabel's films focus on a male hero who must overcome external and internal obstacles but ends up dying young narratives that seem of a piece with his histrionic painting style), also share a misguided obsession with Pablo Picasso."

As for Schnabel's latest exhibition, Navigation Drawings, "Paint on canvas and drawing on paper, not to mention conceptual rigor and curiosity, are not among this artist's strong suits. He is good at other things, but not the basics."

Josh Morgenthau on Chuck Close: "Distilling her film from over 100 hours of raw footage, [Marion] Cajori builds a powerful emotional and intellectual key with which we can begin reading the hieroglyphics of [Chuck] Close's paintings."

Williams Cole talks with Alex Gibney about Taxi to the Dark Side.

Jesi Khadivi on The Yacoubian Building: "At first glance, the film is a morality play with high dramatic flourishes. It's shot like television and has the narrative engine of a soap opera. In spite of, or perhaps because of these traits, the film is surprisingly compelling."

"Juno is another in a long line of pandering, derivative, indecisive Hollywood films that parade themselves under the guise of indie-cred," argues John Oursler.

"In its first 90 seconds Teeth makes every point Juno labors over for its entire 90 minutes," writes Sarahjane Blum:

1. The periphery of American society is fossilizing dangerously.
2. Biology is destiny.
3. Bereft of sage advice from adults until far too late, sex is becoming monstrous for the younger generation.

After summarily addressing these points, the film picks up a story that makes broad points succinctly and develops characters who act like humans, and talk about themselves mercifully little. It does this all while riffing successfully on all of the mutilated women conventions of horror and pornography.

Sarah Kessler on Caramel: "Those of us dying for a decent woman's film may now—at least temporarily—curtail our pining."

"Radio On represents a melancholy requiem from another time, another place," writes Rudy Wurlitzer. "Inside its relentless alienation the bleak compositions of its ruined and soulless landscapes become isolating and yet strangely elegiac; a hypnotic and intimate embrace relating image to language to sound, with no one expression upstaging the other. The film becomes a circular spiral turning in on itself, a rhythm that transcends the whole notion of what it means to go anywhere in particular."

"Some artists torture themselves striving towards perfection: Stanley Kubrick, say, or Joseph Heller, who spent eight years writing Catch 22. Not [Woody] Allen. He churns out crap film after crap film in the hope that, one day, he'll get lucky." And Sophie Gilbert's hoping Cassandra's Dream will be his last set and shot in London.

David Wilentz on the Japan Society's Dawn of Japanese Animation series: "These are not the direct antecedents of anime or prototypes of Speed Racer. The series features films from the late 20s through the 40s that are more parallel to the early cartoons of the west."

I've been wondering who'd raise this point and when. Turns out it's Tessa DeCarlo here and now, reviewing The Bucket List: "Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, it's been clear that not least among his many qualifications for high office—his intelligence, good looks, oratorical skill, and political smarts—is how neatly he appears to fit the stereotype of the Redemptive Black Friend."

Even the Rail can't resist the list-making urge. Before David N Meyer elaborates on his "Eleven Best Films of 2007," he slaps down a couple of other people's favorites: "Tim Burton chose a flashier set of hammers with which to pound us over the head, but Sweeney Todd remained, like There Will Be Blood, inert on the screen, dead on arrival, forcing us away from the story, turning us into mere spectators. The best films 2007, whether brilliant or moronic, offered sufficient embrace to make us all participants."

Posted by dwhudson at February 18, 2008 12:18 AM