La Guerre est déclarée

2011, France, directed by Valérie Donizelli

My godson came to visit from France this past summer, and brought with him a stack of DVDs curated by his mother, an avid filmgoer and sometime actress. I'm not sure if there was a conscious theme, but I was struck by the prominence of children in all of the films bar one -- and the absence of children was a key point there. Children and parenting are front and center here, with a story inspired by Donizelli's real-life experience of dealing with a seriously ill child, whose father, Jérémie Elkaïm, co-stars. While the film ultimately couldn't quite sustain the running time, the first hour is terrific.

That hour is one of the rare bits of cinema that effectively captures the maddening experience of parenthood, for better or worse: the evaporation of one's free time, the crankiness of existing with limited sleep, the joy in small moments, the emotional whiplash of a child who can be wondrous and unbearable almost at the same time. Not many films capture all of that -- and the sense that it's worth all of the challenges. What makes Donizelli's film especially distinctive, though, is her decision not to hew to an exclusively realist mode: there's a beguiling scene when the two lead actors sing to one another, like something from Demy, though later on the scenes of musical accompaniment do come to seem as though they are padding the running time. Still, like virtually all films dealing with children/parenting these days, I found the film as a whole entirely captivating -- and almost unwatchable during several of the hospital sequences, despite the complete absence of anything that might alarm the squeamish.

Le Havre

2011, France/Finland/Germany, directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Though it's a tale told in Kaurismäki's usual magical realist vein -- the kind of lost-in-time alternate universe also inhabited by Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Wes Anderson, to differing effect -- Le Havre nonetheless manages to make some potent points about Europe's migration issues. If the depiction of the lives of migrants doesn't have quite the sharpness of, say, the opening segment of Welcome, for the most part Kaurismäki doesn't soft pedal their reality; when it comes to showing how the authorities deal with "illegals" the tone, and even the colour schemes, shift. The out-of-time quality sometimes produces odd effects: the colour schemes recall the insistently realist tone of a film like Pialat's L'Enfance nue, which was actually made in the 1960s, with even Kaurismäki's film stock seeming to mimic an earlier time. The film is, at its heart, a celebration of a strong local community, able to adapt to new challenges and banding together instinctively when faced with the authority of the state -- perhaps not a perfect depiction of the reality of French working class reactions to new immigrants, but presenting a hopeful alternative path.

Drug War

2013, Hong Kong/China, directed by Johnnie To

Though it's as tightly constructed as most of Johnnie To's Hong Kong-based crime films, with an exceptionally intricate plot that rewards careful attention, the overall aesthetic is much less slick than usual, and the early going in particular is thoroughly deglamorized, with grim landscapes and a nothing-left-to-the-imagination depiction of the work of drug mules. Indeed, at no time is the drug business seen to be especially rewarding -- even those who've made it big seem to have serious problems, whether it's the consequences of their activities on family life, their inability to stop themselves dabbling in their own product, or simply the gnawing tension that comes with a life lived constantly in fear of it all coming to an end. All this is not to suggest that the usual To pleasures are absent, though: the pacing is both expert and breakneck, not least because the action is compressed into a couple of restless days. There is also a standout extended set-piece wherein the police manage the many moving parts of a major drug deal to allow themselves to intervene in the action and pass themselves off as criminals, with Sun Honglei, who plays the head police officer, wryly amusing in his dual roles.

Polisse

2011, France, directed by Maïwenn

Though you only rarely hear it mentioned Bertrand Tavernier's 1992 film L.627 is one of the great latter-day French police movies, a day-to-day depiction of the French police system and the people with whom it comes into contact.  Consciously or not, its influence looms large here, with a child protection unit replacing the earlier film's narcotics squad. There's a little more melodrama on this occasion, particularly on the home front as the various members of the squad become personally involved, and the ending is both unexpected and distracting, but for the most part it, too, is a fascinating depiction of the very different legal philosophy of the French system, with victims and accused drawn together in ways that do not occur in the Anglo-Saxon world.

That makes for some excruciating confrontations, particularly given the nature of the accusations, that would seem only to increase the victims' trauma, while it seems entirely routine for police to push the accused, their accusers, and any witnesses around with considerable physicality, in ways that make some parts of the American and British police worlds seem almost genteel at times. You get the sense that Maïwenn is trying to make a broader point about the weaknesses of her country's investigative processes, though it's hard to know just what the viewer is intended to do with any sense of outrage, particularly since the police, as depicted here, take on many of the social burdens of dealing with criminality, allowing the wider public to be shielded from a never-ending stream of trauma.

Un Prophète

2009, France, directed by Jacques Audiard

Audiard has never lack ambition -- after getting his directorial feet wet with the retrospectively fairly straightforward character study/thriller Regarde les hommes tomber he quickly took on the Occupation period with Un Héros très discret -- but this still feels more expansive than most of his previous work, partly because of the ample running time and more especially for the attempt to create a comprehensive picture of the criminal underworld, in and outside prison. Indeed, Audiard somehow manages to squeeze a storyline similar to that of an entire season of the French crime drama Engrenages into 150 minutes, compressing time without compromising our understanding of the central character's ambitious progress up the criminal food chain.

As a portrait of the prison world, it's dispiriting at best: no re-education here, except in the intricacies of criminal methods and leadership, and there are fascinating insights into the creative ways to turn guards and other prison personnel in order to effect special privileges or introduce a variety of contraband. The final shot makes abundantly clear just what we've been watching, and perhaps best exemplifies the central character's Godfather-esque self-image as an essentially benevolent family man presiding over an empire of great financial and physical power -- self-deception being a critical component of such a rise through the ranks, not least in order to deal with some of the more extreme choices he has made.

Le Conseguenze dell'amore

2004, Italy, directed by Paolo Sorrentino (aka The Consequences of Love)

Paolo Sorrentino's films, like those of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, make a fine argument for returning to similar themes and styles if there's more to be mined from those ideas -- Il Divo shares a lead actor, a bravura style, and a tone with Sorrentino's earlier feature, for instance, but there's no sense of a director simply spinning his wheels. Sorrentino is even able to reproduce a similar scene without it seeming stale: here, a particularly serious moment is accompanied by a rendition of the Ornella Vanoni pop song Rossetto e cioccolato, just as Il Divo features a wonderful sequence intercutting the lead character with a performance of a soaring Renato opus. Perhaps it's a personal sensitivity, but the rhythms of his scenes, where a great deal of the communication and effect are wordless, seems to work especially well for me -- there's a hypnotic quality to his camera movements, prowling corridors over and over (à la Marienbad, with similar dreamlike effect) or unexpectedly rising over the crown of a character's head, revisiting and insistently reworking the same perspectives to give us a sense of a most unusual, cloistered life.

Enter the Dragon

1973, Hong Kong/US, directed by Robert Clouse

Utterly absurd stuff, but of course wildly popular in its day; the hybrid format of American financing and Asian setting is as uneasy as you might expect, with the resourcefulness and visual dexterity of much Hong Kong cinema replaced by a fairly routine James Bond-style setup (all fake ultra-villain lairs and comely, disposable young women). Bruce Lee himself doesn't get caught up in such distractions: he's the single-minded man in the midst of it all, and for the most part the film succeeds in giving his extraordinary physical skills their due, particularly in the scenes with nunchaku. The extended early fight/chase sequence featuring Angela Mao is also quite skilfully done, and the scenes in and around the harbour have a certain degree of historical interest, but much of the subsequent filler is painful.

The Hatchet Man

1932, US, directed by William Wellman

The sexual and drug themes were presumably what would have made The Hatchet Man fall foul of the Production Code from 1934, but the more startling aspect to the modern viewer is the sight of Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and others made up to look like Chinese characters: the actual characters themselves are a good deal more free of stereotype than you might expect, and a story that takes place entirely within the Chinese community of San Francisco is quite intriguing as an idea, but the almost complete failure to give any parts to actual Asian actors makes for a major distraction in 2013. I
do wonder whether the original audience was bothered by the rather obvious eye makeup or whether these kinds of exclusions and appropriations were so routine that they went unremarked. Despite all that, Edward G. Robinson is very good in the titular role: there's not a million miles between the character and some of the American gangland roles he played, and his intensity near the conclusion gives the film a real jolt of conviction.

L'Homme qui voulait vivre sa vie

2010, France, directed by Eric Lartigau

Disappointing, frankly. Romain Duris is capable of carrying both light and dark material, but he never really convinces in the opening segment of this film, cast as a successful lawyer and playful father (Duris is a father offscreen, but seemed very awkward around his onscreen children, which undermines the moment late on when they assume great significance). Duris is rather better matched with the character after a profound transformation -- the methodical plotting of a change of identity is the film's strongest suit -- but it's hard not to recall what came before, while the ending is both unconvincingly melodramatic and rather pat. It may well have been lifted more or less directly from Douglas Kennedy's source novel The Big Picture, which I've not read, but onscreen it's rushed and weak.

Captain America

2011, US, directed by Joe Johnston

Silly, sure, but a whole lot better than the capstone Avengers: at least there's a story here, and an attempt, however schematic, to create actual characters that allow for a degree of emotional payoff. Joe Johnston has always been adept at the action/humour mélange, as well as for a certain willingness to tweak superhero tropes going back as far as The Rocketeer (Chris Evans's pre-superhero persona surely owes a little something to the wacky nerd of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, too); if he goes light indeed on the reality of warfare at times, he's pretty good at nailing some of the absurd hoopla of American propaganda.

Short Eyes

1977, US, directed by Robert M. Young

Though certainly of its time as a portrait of the New York prison system -- the location for the filming, in an actual prison in Manhattan, no longer exists, while AIDS is several years in the future -- Short Eyes is also strikingly modern, with a directness of expression that seems to elude a great many more recent, less courageous films: the portrait of John Heard, the titular "short eyes," or accused paedophile, expresses a sympathy for his demons without ever excusing or diminishing his impact on his victims, while the language of the film has a rawness that's jarring and effective. The film's bona fides as a piece of authentic work are impeccable: Miguel Pinero, who wrote the original stage play and adapted his work for the screen, began the project while in prison himself, and his attention to the constant noise as well as the alternating loneliness and sociability of prison life are striking.

Il Divo

2008, Italy, directed by Paolo Sorrentino

In the second half of Paolo Sorrentino's enthralling portrait of Giulio Andreotti, there's a scene where the politician sits quietly with his wife and watches a Renato Zero concert on television. Zero sings a soaring version of I Migliori Anni Della Nostra Vita, a choice of title that's of course entirely apposite to the film's portrayal of Andreotti as a man who reaches the political pinnacle while barely ever appearing to enjoy a single moment of his profess life (making him the most un-Italian of his countrymen). It's a bravura sequence, carefully splicing images of Zero on stage with the unspoken understanding between Andreotti and his wife, and cutting with a sudden silence to the next scene -- a fine example of Sorrentino's confident showmanship and also of how that showmanship is always in the service of his story. Not incidentally, it also showcases his instinct for music, whether Italian or English-language pop, classical, or original soundtrack (the intoxicating marriage of music to image reminds me Olivier Assayas's films). Sorrentino doesn't lay claim to definitive truth here -- any account of Andreotti's professional life is filled with silence and shadow -- but the cumulative picture of Italy's rotten political scene is quite devastating.

Brick

2005, US, directed by Rian Johnson

A sustained exercise in style that never attempts to parody the 1940s hard-boiled pictures that it quite earnestly evokes, Brick ultimately left me rather cold -- those same hard-boiled pictures had a richer sense of humour, and a relish to the delivery of every line that's too often absent here. Lukas Haas, though, seems to sense a little more of what's afoot, chewing just a little on the scenery as a drug peddler to local high schools who still lives in his mother's basement...

The Avengers

2012, US, directed by Joss Whedon

I spent much of the running time here musing on how godawfully loud this would have been on the big screen, which is probably not what the makers were going for. It's not a standalone film, but the capstone for a series of adventures of generally marginal interest to me, so I suppose it's never going to work for me as intended, but more disappointing is the fact that it has very little of the sense of fun I associate with Joss Whedon -- there are a couple of enjoyable scenes of barbed dialogue but otherwise it's one long battle sequence. Bang, bang, bang.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2011, US, directed by Brad Bird

Exhibit A, I'd have thought, in any effort to show that a major summer blockbuster can still be made with a dash of intelligence and more than a little humour while still delivering the thrills expected of the genre. Though Brad Bird seems entirely at his ease in the live action format, he imports several of the tricks of his animated background, not least the focus on tiny details scattered throughout the frame that make watching a picture like Ratatouille such a continually rewarding experience, while also finding an easy mix between light-hearted dialogue and action that eludes many other pictures, not least Tom Cruise's prior effort.

Utu

1983, New Zealand, directed by Geoff Murphy

That rare film that arguably makes a genuine difference to historical understanding of its particular time period, without actually being historically accurate, Geoff Murphy's "Kiwi western" ended up being screened for a couple of generations of New Zealand students as part of their history syllabus -- part of a wave of historical revisionism that also saw James Belich's book The New Zealand Wars become a somewhat unlikely local hit.

Murphy's aim is not so much to clarify the actual events of the mid-19th century as to give a sense of the cross-cutting motivations, conflicts, and interdependencies of settlers, Maori (who had far more than a single agenda), and the British army. The various actors come into strikingly close contact at times: these people often knew each other intimately whether they were on friendly or unfriendly terms, and the film is especially strong on giving virtually everyone (save the British commander) considerable nuance of character.

It's also highly assured from a technical standpoint, in contrast to the patched together qualities of Murphy's Wild Man, and Murphy finds some stirring beauty in the New Zealand landscape years before Peter Jackson altered the field; the sequences of horsemen crossing the sun-dappled land recall Breaker Morant, another film that did its utmost to rework our understanding of the British colonial record. And all this without sacrificing thrills and spills, whether it's the set piece attack on a settler home or the iconic Kiwi cinema moment when Bruno Lawrence raises his quadruple-barrelled shotgun for the first time.

Rolling Thunder

1977, US, directed by John Flynn

The core idea here is to see just what happens when you push someone to the edge, and then right over -- classic exploitation stuff, but handled with considerable skill, and, until the finale, a surprising degree of tact in terms of how to show, or not show, scenes of violence. Indeed, much of the tension comes from the idea that we're not quite sure which direction things could go. Politically, the film remains a little muddled -- it's clearly critical of the ways that veterans of Vietnam are treated, and is somewhat ahead of its time in the focus on PTSD, but it never really delves into the fact that virtually all of the "bad" folk are non-white, across the border or overseas, even if a token Anglo creates further confusion. William Devane and, in a smaller role, Tommy Lee Jones are both very strong, depicting men desperately trying to hold it together in a world that has moved on and papered over the experiences that have become central to their lives.

Heaven's Gate

1980, US, directed by Michael Cimino

I'd never read Steven Bach's chronicle of the making of Heaven's Gate (or at least the parts he could recount, since his fellow executive David Field and director Michael Cimino withheld their cooperation), and revisited the film before cracking the spine. Even as a film, never mind as a financial endeavour, the picture has its problems, at least if you approach it hoping for some of the conventional pleasures of Hollywood -- a clear storyline, reasonably well-developed characters, and so forth.

Although I'm by no means averse to cinema that takes its time making a point, or even taking time to be the point itself, the mix of epic, technically impeccable staging and almost interminable point-making here seems awkward at best. While the prologue is designed to give the film a greater resonance, rather than condemning it to the then-unfashionable Western genre, I found it so unengaging that I almost gave up before the film proper had begun; John Hurt, a favorite performer, can't do a whole lot with a character who has virtually no development, and his opening scenes seem especially thankless in that respect.

And yet, the film casts a strange kind of spell -- partly, I think, because there's something genuinely beguiling about the idea of Hollywood committing serious money to an artistic take on class warfare in the nineteenth century west (even if it's junk as history). And partly, too, because on an individual scene level much of the film is quite masterful -- the choreography of players and cameras is remarkable, whether in the relative intimacy of a barroom, the public arena of the roller rink (unlike other segments, they're not a second too long), or the astonishing, brutal finale on the battlefield.

Le Plein de super

1976, France, directed by Alain Cavalier

A film very much of its particular historical moment, France in the mid-1970s, both on a self-conscious level, with director Alain Cavalier and his actor/collaborators seeking to capture the language and attitudes of the time, but also in terms of a new permissiveness of content that saw far more adult fare on French screens. The spirit of the café-théâtre collaboratives of the time, with the same people writing and performing, is also very much in evidence, though the quartet of actors here came from a more classical training (at least three of them attended the same acting school).

The road movie is especially well-suited to Cavalier's aims, with the format allowing for a multiplicity of incidents and asides that can nonetheless be tied to the central overnight car journey from the north of France to the southern coast. The heart of the film is the extended conversational riffing between the principals, on everything from the state of France to the state of their relations (not always relationships) with women, with the boredom of the journey, not to mention lack of sleep, slowly taking their toll. Like Les Valseuses and La Maman et la putain, this is a very male take on The Big Questions, and women have a far more peripheral onscreen presence here, too; that, though, is part of the point, with Cavalier ultimately suggesting, I think, the insecurities on display rather than endorsing the blustery assurance of the characters themselves as they banter in their exclusively male environment.

The Wolverine

2013, US, directed by James Mangold

We'd seen all the previous X-Men and related films on the big screen, and couldn't resist taking advantage of some free babysitting to continue the streak. As expected, the film follows a fairly straightforward formula, albeit with a good deal of back story, leading up to a CGI-heavy confrontation, but there's a good deal of pleasure to be had in the middle section, which is less effects laden and with some degree of character development. It's also refreshing that many of the fight sequences involve actual human beings carefully choreographed, presumably in partial homage to the samurai films of the picture's Japanese setting. Despite the star-centric title, there's still room for others to make an impression: Rila Fukushima is especially good as Wolverine's self-appointed "bodyguard."