the Grey: (2011. dir: Joe Carnahan) As a contemplation on death and how to die with dignity and grace, the Grey is a lovely film, with good actors, photography, and use of sound and editing all interweaving to form a gorgeous memento mori. As an action film about unarmed men in the wilds fighting wolves, it is less successful: the wolves act (and look, and sound) more like monsters from a creature-feature than true predatory animals, and often they are deployed to jump-start the action when a new plot turn is needed. Liam Neeson, in the end, is the reason we watch: he wields both the chops and charisma to carry off the difficult final scene and, indeed, he is a perpetual magneto at the film's center, emitting magnificent pulses of electrical current throughout.
Sisters: (1973. dir: Brian De Palma) Yeah, there's Hitchcock in it, but also, interestingly, a slight portent of the approaching Cronenberg. De Palma's creative use of split-screen, drug-induced dream sequence, and a constant playfulness with his central motif of voyeurism gives this early venture an ageless vitality alongside its lodged-firmly-in-the-70s look. The performances and script veer wildly across the scale from pretty good to kind of silly, the vicious blood-letting scenes are made plain weird by blood thick like orange-red paint, and the final scenes are kind of a let-down, although I do love that shot of the cow standing next to the sofa in front of the railroad tracks.
Mostly, this is a piece of cinematic history, and should be viewed as such, from a time when De Palma was still fresh and his flaws were balanced and sometimes outweighed by his berserker levels of enthusiasm.
Day of the Falcon: (2011. dir: Jean-Jacques Annaud) The best thing about this movie is Mark Strong. The second best thing is that the editing is sufficiently smooth that we never have to linger long on any of the endless string of cliches from which the story is assembled. The third best thing is that it is beautifully colorful.
This is the putative story of how the Arab desert became the wealthy distributor of oil that it is today. If it has a remarkable virtue, it is that the only Westerners in it are the Texas oil-workers who instigate the trouble, and that their part is largely played off-screen. Everything else about it seems a little dubious (one comes away with a sense that it's been absurdly simplified and many evils shunted into unseen corners), outlandish (the army just happens to arrive at the stretch of strand from which they can see the fresh water bubbling up off-shore?), and, ultimately, dull. The lead character, a bookish boy grown into an unlikely military leader, is seriously boring.
The role of women is depressing to the point of inducing nightmares. Although Annaud tries to feist (and sex) up these (all drop-dead gorgeous) gals, every woman here either dies in childbirth, retreats into her bedroom to die of despair at her man's choices, peers out at the world with increasing frustration from behind the walls of a harem, or works shackled as a slave.
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