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Reviews
The Oh in Ohio (2006)
'Oh' no....
"The Oh in Ohio" had a lot of the ingredients to make it a successful film but it didn't quite do it for me. I enjoy the premise of the film as it centers on the Priscilla's sexual awakening. I enjoy Paul Rudd's performance. He is always likable. I commend the film for pairing an unlikely couple together, even though it is not within the norms of Hollywood. However, I found the film to be oddly hollow. While I appreciated the trajectory and character arc of Priscilla and Jack, I also found it difficult to pinpoint the point of the story. Priscilla's narrative felt confident. It knew where it wanted to go. However, Paul Rudd's storyline seems muddied. I wasn't sure how his narrative fit into the grand scheme of the movie. The ending seemed abrupt and unconvincing. It left us a void that the movie should have filled. That said, it is still an enjoyable film. Paul Rudd and Parker Posey are great enough actors to keep us captivated, even if the story doesn't do them justice.
Answers to Nothing (2011)
Commendable but unsuccessful
Films that depend on the interlocking of different story lines are always treading on dangerous terrains. I can only think of a few films that manage to thrive through such a formula. Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Amores Perros" manages to take disparate plots and various characters and unite them in a manner that does not make it seem like a gimmick. Perhaps one can cite Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" as a successful employment of this type of narrative, although; his is more closely attributed to serial pulp novels. But these are the few exceptions for often than not, they are disasters waiting to happen.
The seminal film that proves this is Paul Haggis's highly overrated film "Crash," where various story lines and characters intersect each other in the heart of Los Angeles, by way of chance and coincidence, makes the film a shallow and misinformed reading of racism. By attempting to encompass everything and everyone in Los Angeles, it ultimately has nothing to say about its themes and subjects. Similarly, "Answers to Nothing" falls victim to such a narrative ploy,
While I give the film credit for not wholly attempting to shamelessly delve into racial politics, but like "Crash," it fails to say much about anything. Although the various narrative threads are united by the case of a missing girl, they do not necessarily coalesce narratively or thematically. The film's protagonist Ryan, played by Dane Cook, is caught in the terrain of uncertainty through his infidelity. His girlfriend Kate is direction-less and preoccupied with having a child. Drew is a woman who has been sober for six months. She takes care of her handicapped brother. We later find out they got in a car accident after she had too much to drink. Carter is an elementary school teacher who is the moral compass of the film, even though he spends most of his free time playing MMO games. Allegra, a beautiful African- American woman, sees a therapist because she hates "black people." There are more characters and story lines than I can count, all somehow insignificantly connected to the other.
Yet, they all don't coalesce into a coherent narrative. While it is better than "Crash," in that it doesn't rely on the idea of coincidence and chance to propel the story and affect the characters, it is still direction-less and hollow. The characters try hard in becoming empathetic but the story offers little to relate. The only meaningful character in the film, which so happens to be tied to the missing girl, is Carter. There seems to be a purpose and profundity in his character. It is a shame that there are not more characters as well constructed as him.
I commend the film for attempting this type of narrative. Like "Crash," it is set in Los Angeles. However, unlike that film, it doesn't become a caricature of an entire city. "Answers to Nothing" is not a total disaster but it is further proof that this type of narrative is difficult to accomplish successfully.
Spinning Plates (2012)
Spinning Plates and their Spinning Lives
Spinning Plates is a documentary film directed by Joseph Levy. It centers on three restaurants, each one unique not only for its cuisine, but also its owners and their turmoil. Levy introduces us to Chef Grant Achatz and his Michelin three-star rated restaurant Alinea in Chicago. It is followed by the Martinez's struggling Tuscon Mexican restaurant La Cocina de Gabby. Finally, we have the Breitbachs and their restaurant Breitbach's Country Dining, which has been around Baltown, Iowa for over 150 years. While these three samples seem random, albeit eclectic, the film's final moment ties everything together into a coherent narrative about food and family.
I admire how Levy presents us with three restaurants, each one unique for its economic and social status in the culinary world. The Martinez's restaurant is a struggling familial enterprise. Francisco Martinez is an overly optimistic father, whose only wish is to have his restaurant succeed in order to provide for his daughter. His wife Gabby is the restaurant's sole chef, who beliefs her style of home cooking is what makes her food distinct. However, circumstances arise where they are forced to leave the home Francisco bought for his wife. Out of the three stories in the film, theirs is the most heartbreaking and familiar for it signals not only the economic slide but unearths the realities of the restaurant business.
The other family owned restaurant in the film centers on the Breitbachs. Their restaurant is so firmly established in their small town that it has become a cornerstone of the community. Unlike the Martinez's restaurant, it is not economic difficulties that unsettle the family but sheer bad luck. The Breitbach's Country Dining was twice destroyed by fire. Both times the community gathered together to help rebuild it. Their storyline reveals how food is both personal and communal. It looks at how the restaurant transcends business and settles into the realm of a communal relic.
In perhaps the most detached of the three, but more engaging, at least for me, is on Chef Grant Achatz and his famed restaurant Alinea. Grant represents the current explosion of high cuisine, where the trend now is the fusion of cooking with science. Where he and his team cook in is a kitchen and a science laboratory hybrid. Pots and pans sit next to Bunsen burners. Before Grant started his own career, he worked under Thomas Keller, who many consider to be one of the greatest chefs. As an avid fan of Mr. Keller, whose laurels extend from his esteemed restaurant The French Laundry all the way to his role as a consultant for Pixar's Ratatouille, I can never tire of listening to his infinite wisdom. Grant is a product of Keller, who focuses on providing not only an artistic and memorable experience, but also, nurturing the customers on a primitive level. While his story seems to be the most artificial, compared to the struggle faced by the Martinez family, Levy flips the script by revealing of Grant's fight against cancer. Levy does a successful job at bringing back his story down to Earth, making him more empathetic.
Levy goes a very good job at juggling the difference in class and economic standings with these three restaurants. The ending of the film with Grant's voice-over is a touching ending that ties the themes of the movie together. Despite the difference in social and economic standing, the film purports to say that food and restaurant function similarly. The ending makes you rethink about these three restaurants. It no longer seems like they are just three disparate restaurants but shows the trajectory of how a restaurant can grow on a grassroot level into one that sits atop the culinary world. Spinning Plates is a delightful film for the casual viewer and for food buffs like myself.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Baumbach's Best.
I can't remember the last time a movie has so effectively set up the premise and conflict for the entire film in just its opening scene. Bernard and Walt are teamed up against Joan and Frank in a tennis match. The heated play of both teams not only hints at favoritism but it foreshadows a marriage that is on the breaking point.
Even though it runs at a terse 88 minutes, "The Squid and the Whale" is a personal and engrossing look at an American family in Brooklyn during the 1980s. Based on the childhood of director Noah Baumbach, the film centers around the divorce of Bernard and Joan Berkman and the effect it has on their two sons, Walt and Frank, after they decide on a joint custody.
Bernard, played memorably by Jeff Daniels, is a pompous intellectual whose literary career has hit a snag. His pompous nature enables him to suggest that "A Tale of Two Cities" is "minor Dickens" and that Franz Kafka is his predecessor. After the divorce, Bernard has an affair with Lili (Anna Paquin), one of his students. Joan, a role perfectly fitted for Laura Linney, has been having an affair with their tennis coach, Ivan (William Baldwin), and we do not necessarily blame her for it. Walt, one of Eisenberg's best performances, absorbs everything his father says, which includes relationship advice. Although he has a girlfriend, Walt is infatuated by Lili and wants to play the field. Frank (Owen Kline) is going through puberty as he constantly masturbates and leaves a trace of it around the school.
While the plot is minimal in the film, the strength lies in the profundity of the characters. The movie works in that it relies on the conflict of these characters to drive the story forward. More importantly, Baumbach does a great job at keeping the viewer in a neutral position. All the characters have their flaws; yet, we remain equally empathetic to all of them. While the boys and parents seem to take sides, the spectator is not driven to quick conclusions. We understand that the characters are profound human beings who are not wholly good or bad. That is the power of "The Squid and the Whale."
The Other Dream Team (2012)
Politics and Sports
Dave Zirin, one of America's most prolific political sportswriter, wrote that "the very passion we invest in sports can transform it from a kind of mindless escape into a site of resistance." With all the pomp and circumstance we afford sports today - the 24-hour cycle of media coverage, greedy ownership, athletic merchandising and advertisements – sports have become merely another cog in today's economic globalization. For the younger generation, it may be hard to fathom that before the Michael Jordans, Lebron James, and Tiger Woods, it was the Muhammad Alis, John Carlos and Tommie Smiths that globalized their respective sports, not through commercial means, but political ones.
As an avid sports fan, I find that sports is at its most entertaining when it is infused with some sort of political implication. And anyone who dares to suggest that sports and politics should never coexist is mind-numbingly misinformed. While we still see the cultural and political resonance in international sports today, American sports has been politically starving for quite some time. Consider soccer's international stage, specifically the "El Clasico" matches between Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona. The sport becomes a political means of contestation between divided factions within the nation. Imagine how great the NFL would be if their games had a hint of cultural and political significance. Why don't we encourage and cheer for the defeat of the Arizona Cardinals, a state that encourages racist policies and treatment of immigrants? We do not because this is a testament to how successfully corporate America has shielded us from the everyday concerns of this country. Sport is cheered because it comforts us from real worries. Don't worry about Hurricane Sandy. The New York Knicks and the Miami Heat are playing!
The reason I bring this up is because in Marius Markevicius's new film "The Other Dream Team," not only does it reveal how sports became a form of resistance but it is contrasted with the moment when sports was devaluing in American society. "The Other Dream" is a compelling and insightful documentary about the Lithuanian basketball team in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
Before Lithuania was a sovereign nation, it was a tiny nation sandwiched between two oppressive countries, Germany and the Soviet Union. The film chronicles the extent to which the Soviet Union ruled this tiny population with an iron fist. At the center of the film are Sarunas Marculionis and Arvydas Sabonis, the two stars of the Lithuanian basketball team. The former was drafted by the Golden State Warriors and the latter played for the Portland Trailblazers. The film juxtaposes the extreme political conditions in which they lived under with the fact that they played for the USSR. In the '88 Olympics, four Lithuanian players made up the Soviet team and helped lead their oppressive rulers lift the gold. Despite their exceptional talent, the government hindered their progress as they made it difficult for them to play in the NBA.
After the end of the Cold War, Lithuania gained its independence. Then with the 1992 Olympics coming up, Lithuania saw a window of opportunity to present themselves in the world's stage. With the funding from the Grateful Dead and sporting totally awesome psychedelic tie-dye shirts, the Lithuanian basketball team played for more than just victory. They played for resistance. They played for identity and nationalism. Although they eventually lost to the Dream Team in the semi-finals, it was the third-place match against the Soviet Union that was pivotal for the nation.
Markevicius does a very good job at always focusing on the political aspects of the story. He strays away from the typical norms in sports films. What I love most about the film though is perhaps unintended by the director. While the film is ultimately about the Lithuanian basketball team and how the sport served as a weapon of resistance, it conversely reveals the deterioration of politics in American sports. Although the film hardly focuses on it, the contrast is there. The formulation of America's Dream Team may have some political significance. With the Cold War nearing its end, their need to reclaim the gold from the Soviet Union is very much in the back of their minds. Yet, the dominance of the USA team always remained at a superficial basketball level. They were not playing for nationalization. They played for fame at a global level. I believe this set the trend for basketball, once America's most politically laden sport, to become part of the economic globalization.
"The Other Dream Team" is great in that it proves sport is inherently political, even when it is not.