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Sundance Report: Max The Mad Gourmet looks at AMERICAN PSYCHO, JOE GOULD'S SECRET and EVERYTHING PUT TOGETHER!!!
Alright folks, looks like the coverage of SUNDANCE is beginning to trickle in. Hopefully, as the various adventurers in that frozen mountain town defrost... we'll hear more. But in this episode of coverage we have looks at two of the big QUESTION MARKS for the festival... AMERICAN PSYCHO and JOE GOULD'S SECRET... both of which had great expectations... and then there's a film we hadn't heard too much about called EVERYTHING PUT TOGETHER which sounds as though it's a pretty damn good movie! So let's listen to Max, The Mad Gourmet!!!!
Max the mad gourmet back
with a few more Sundance reviews. These are just the three movies I've
gotten around to typing up. Post what you will. Enjoy.
AMERICAN PSYCHO
Christian Bale’s performance in American Psycho reminded me of Jim
Carrey. I think that’s a bad thing. After all, Carrey specializes in giving
voice (and contorted face) to audiences’ desire for anarchy. To have this
desire expressed through the person of Patrick Bateman, a heartless, sadistic
murderer, is more than a bit disturbing. There are scenes where we are
clearly meant to applaud and enjoy Bateman’s sick sense of humor and unhinged
sense of control; even in our horror, we admire his “work.” If the movie
seemed to be eliciting this kind of response in order to then berate us for
being such sick puppies, it might at least be called a stand-offish and
manipulative morality tale. As it is, it’s like the sickest joke you ever
heard - stretched out to 104 minutes.
Why did I react with such violent disgust to this movie, even
though I was a great admirer of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which similarly
compelled its audience to root for a murderer? Perhaps because Ripley felt
more like a character study and less like a glossy B-movie. Why was I so
offended by American Psycho’s jokey attitude, even though I enjoyed the
similarly ironic tone of last year’s Fight Club? I will suggest two reasons:
one, that Fight Club’s narrator, however weak or disturbed, served as a kind
of moral center; and two, that Tyler Durden would rather change lives than
take them away. Patrick Bateman has no social agenda; he kills for fun. He
is unredeemed and unredeemable. As for the movie: it’s slick, precise, and
coolly executed. Ultimately, though, it’s as soulless as its main character.
I’m tempted to say it’s as sick.
JOE GOULD'S SECRET
Some movies seem to exist primarily to introduce us to a new and
utterly unique character. Joe Gould’s Secret is one of those movies, and Joe
Gould is as colorful a fellow as you’d ever care to meet. Broken down
intellectual, performance artist before the term was coined, prophet of the
underground, martyr to his own crackpot cause: Joe Gould is a magnetic and
fascinating creature, played by Ian Holm as a kind of driven wartime
Falstaff, living off of the kindness of others and rewarding them with a
glimpse into his fractured but luminous soul. Joe Gould is homeless, but he
feels at home in the nooks and crannies of New York City. We meet him in one
such cranny through the eyes of our narrator, New Yorker contributor Joseph
Mitchell, played by Stanley Tucci (who also wrote and directed the film).
Tucci’s performance is easy to underrate, drowned out as it is by the sheer
fury and vehemence of Holm’s tour de force. But in fact Tucci’s Mitchell is
a perfect foil for Joe Gould; his gentle North Carolina accent and quiet
sense of decorum give the movie its light touch, and his amused, slightly
taken-aback attitude to the title character mirrors the audience’s feelings.
This is a gentle movie. It is subtle, reflective, and empathetic,
with plenty of conflict but no real villains. When it is funny, it is warmly
funny; when it is bitter, it is bittersweet. Once again Tucci has crafted a
delicate ode to the middle of the century, and for my money Joe Gould’s
Secret surpasses his critically acclaimed Big Night - it has a more graceful
story arc, a richer mystique, and that one unforgettable character.
EVERYTHING PUT TOGETHER
Everything Put Together takes a very simple story and uses it to put
the audience through an intense emotional wringer. It follows the personal
journey of Angie (High Art’s Radha Mitchell, beautiful and compellingly
truthful) as she endures a deeply personal tragedy in an antiseptic and
isolating world. The movie’s visual style plays with hand-held camera,
background/foreground, and the extremes of light and dark to make its
audience experience a world both alien and familiar, a world with a vaguely
sinister quality lurking just beneath its bright, shiny exterior. The more
nightmarish sequences have a wrenching visceral impact; these later scenes
are all the more devastating because the film’s beginning has an intensely
realistic, documentary-like aesthetic. As the heroine seems to flirt with
madness, the film itself begins to go mad, assaulting us with a rush of
powerful and completely disorienting images.
Even the most minor characters in Everything Put Together are quirky
and interesting (I particularly liked the wry but tender doctor played by
Matt Malloy), and all of the acting is subtle and effective. Mitchell’s
magnetic, unflinching performance in the lead is a triumph of bravery and
self-effacement. Angie is never made to be hollowly sympathetic; she is a
complicated human being, a woman of extremes who is capable of great love but
also of tremendous anger and alienation. In the end Angie seems to have
regained some semblance of a normal life, but we sense that she is changed,
incapable of taking the world around her at face value or taking her
stability for granted. The ending of the movie is not fully satisfying; it
resolves very little and seems a bit judgmental of characters who had been
depicted as flawed but well-meaning. Still, director Marc Forster has
crafted an ambitious and rewarding drama. I left Everything Put Together with
a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. In a good way.
another thrilling recipe of cinefilmcritique from,
Max the Mad Gourmet!!!
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I'm hearing AP got slapped with the dreaded NC-17. Thankfully even tho 90% of the theatres in my state are Regal, I'll be able to find screens to see it. Sounds cool
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well, maybe they can but shadowy, cloaked figures in front of the gruesome scenes to ensure an 'R' rating. And that violence must be pretty hardcore, because sex is the MPAA's sensitive side. On a serious note, are they giving it NC-17 because the murderer is the protagonist, and clearly enjoying himself? If you are a soldier killing multitudes of foreigners is that "less offensive" and not as likely to get an NC-17. From what we've seen in the past I'd say so.
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Thanks for the great, albeit quick, review. I've heard nothing but great things about this movie and can't wait to see it.
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The book was more disturbing than anything I have ever read before so I would hope that the filmmakers did not turn it into a slasher movie like Scream. I'd rather puke at my own inhumanity than because of a bad script.
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What was the audience's reaction to JOE GOULD'S SECRET? I read this script a year ago, and absolutely loved it. As a result, I'm really pulling for it.
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AP looks pretty sweet, I saw a trailer for it before "all about my mother". Was that... Reese Witherspoon i saw? Did'nt know she was in it. The tucci film sounds good, too.
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Wasn't that movie slapped with an NC-17? I just bought that film a couple of days ago and I must say that's it is the most violent flick I've ever witnessed! Nonetheless, the movie was really enertaining and I reccomend it to anyone. Same goes for Orgazmo, which is a movie that some will like and others will dislike (If you didn't laugh too much during American Pie or Something About Mary, you'll still love this film because it's not as gross).
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...Whether this is a triumph of adaptation or merely a faithful mimicking of artistic failure remains to be seen.
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American Psycho didn't get the NC-17 for violence. The rating was due to one particular sex scene between Patrick Bateman and two prostitutes.
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Am I hearing this? This guy dislikes 'American Psycho' because it doesn't have that 'moral center'????
Yeowwww. Call the Spielberg Police. Man, WHY must ART have a moral center? Why must it be PC? Why must it be ultimately good? Maybe the point is to say how something about US is deeply immoral - you can't sweep everything under a moral blanket! Patrick Bateman has no moral center, and Heaven forbid he should, for then he WOULD STAND FOR NOTHING. The way he is, he represents something foul about his times. God, why make a film of American Psycho if you're going to give him a moral center? I've never heard such a ridiculous reason to berate this project. -
I found The Talented Mr. Ripley more disturbing than American Psycho, as the "gay" angle insinuated a few things that I found offensive; that us gay guys are needy, vampiric lost souls. This viewpoint is also promoted often by the ex-gay Christian ministries; its a bias we can do without. As for a "moral center", American Psycho ended with a very obvious symbol that completed the theme of the entire movie. Without revealing a spoiler, I can safely say that the filmmakers omitted the "moral center" for obvious reasons. The reviewer totally missed the point.
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This movie has been given an "R"
rating. Lion Gate films has cut the prostitute scene to avoid NC17 rating.
For you lucky Americans living in Detroit and Buffalo, however, you will see the film uncut if you are willing to drive over to Canada...
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