Change Your Image
nelsoneric44
Reviews
Under the Skin (2013)
A alien takes the form of a woman and seduces men in Scotland. Self-discovery follows but with it come other consequences.
Scarlett Johansson is programmed to seduce. Most would accept that as a blanket statement adding that there's much more to her than just that. True. But in Under the Skin, she really is programmed to seduce; an alien occupying a human body who's tasked to pick up young men while cruising the streets of Glasgow at night in a plain tradesman's van. All roads lead back to her place where she strips while leading her victims through a door into a black void. The young lads don't seem to notice the void, so distracted they are by you know who. They never get what they want because the floor beneath them liquefies and they sink into a fluid purgatory. We get to experience it with one of her victims who meets some of his predecessors there. While he floats, one of them meets his end in the most visually arresting manner imaginable, done as in 'in camera' effect I think. Scarlet continues her fine work until she meets the Elephant Man . . . The genuine article . . . really! Then, things start to change. Don't be put off by the bleakness and quiet pace. Patience is rewarded with sparingly used haunting visual effects in this minor poetic masterpiece.
Mlyn i krzyz (2011)
The story of Peter Bruegel the Elder's conceiving and rendering his1564 painting The Procession to Calvary
Set in Flanders during the 16th century, It is inspired by Peter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary. The drama depicts Breugel's creative process conceiving and rendering the painting while life goes on around him: the gentle humour in the pastoral activities of the peasants including Breugel's own family, along with the arbitrary and horrible crucifixion of alleged Protestants by the red-tuniced Spanish Inquisition militia sent from the Vatican.
If you're looking for an interesting narrative, action, character development, witty dialogue, or any dialogue at all, you're out of luck. The film is in English, but the amount of melodramatic mutterings from the only 3 English speakers would barely fill a page (all of the rest of the actors are Polish). This film dies on a small screen. If on the other hand, you're able to watch it on the largest possible screen in HD, you're in for a rare treat. The narrative is not what it's about, it's almost entirely about the remarkable imagery.
Bruegel was inspired by the work of Hieronymus Bosch, both in his depiction of religious events and his style of rendering. Like Bosch, Bruegel depicted many scenes of human activity within one painting (art as a narrative medium for the illiterate). In The Procession to Calvary, Christ carrying the cross is depicted small in scale, at the centre of the composition, surrounded by many other apparently unrelated groupings. The whole scene is dominated by a mill in the background sitting precariously on an impossible rock perch. Bruegel seems to have been working in the period before the formal rules of perspective entered the visual language of painters. His figures do shrink in size from foreground to background, but the terrain they occupy appears parallel or flat to the picture plane.
This quality seems to make it ideal for the director's whimsical depiction of the painting taking shape in the artist's mind: groupings of real figures, all apparently shot in isolation, animate the entire surface of the painting, waiting to be frozen in time by the Bruegel's brush. Seeing the painting briefly in this manner is one of the most charming moments of cinematic art in recent memory.
The director doesn't stop there in his use of a Bruegelesque approach to a visual medium Bruegel could't have imagined. There are numerous scenes where the camera gazes steadily on elaborately staged action in the distant background while something else transpires in close up. Both parts are in sharp focus. Trying to achieve this in-camera would present the cinematographer with an impossible depth of field situation. I expect a lot of scenes were carefully staged in this way, to be digitally knitted together in post-production. In every scene the colours and textures are a visual feast and the lighting looks deceptively natural. The costumes are stunning and the production design like a painting by Bruegel.
As for the dialogue: this film might have been better without any; maybe a bit of voice-over at best. Rutger Hauer's craggy features make him entertaining enough to watch as Bruegel. He needn't have opened his mouth. Michael York as Bruegel's patron Nicolaes Jonghelinck just looks old and Charlotte Rampling as Mary delivers her standard serenely sad gazes, but is otherwise forgettable.
Take Shelter (2011)
An examination of schizophrenia
This is one of the best dramatized examinations of schizophrenia I've seen. The slow pace, bleak setting and simple lifestyle of the characters helps focus attention on the dilemma: the central character's obsession with storms that could develop into twisters and threaten the lives of his family.
He takes extreme steps to protect his family while suffering with his affliction. He acknowledges to himself and his wife that he has a problem, and seeks medical help, but he's never able to get the treatment he needs because he refuses to release control over his life.
The struggle between control and the need to give it up continues to an ending which provides a redemption which some may find a bit inappropriate, but not a letdown.
Performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain are excellent along with a charming turn by Shea Wigham as their deaf daughter. There are flashy but not too flashy FX scenes near the end, employing swarms of digital birds, but there is also a brief but stunning dream effect early on that looks like it was cleverly done in-camera.