Geri's Game
Jan Pinkava 1997 US 1st time; YouTube
An old man plays himself at Chess, almost loses, then has a "heart attack".
Funny, gaining from a likeable old chap who outwits his own alter ego. It's got that usual Pixar feel, from the very beginning, with an accordion soundtrack and lovely to look at visuals. The sound of the chess pieces slamming on and scraping along the board is nice and crisp, too.

Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait
Douglas Gordon / Philippe Parreno 2005 France/Iceland 1st time; big screen
April 23, 2005: Real Madrid take on Villareal at home in the Spanish football league; the cameras follow playmaker Zinedine Zidane for the entire match.
That's the selling point, but it is slightly misleading: there is, now and then, a detracting, rather unnecessary cut-away to the empty corridors of the stadium while the match goes on, and it is often caught at the awkward mid-way point between concentrating on Zidane alone, and placing him in the context of the match itself - the original televised coverage is mixed in too, and POV shots are even attempted at one point, with cut-aways to the scoreboard edited into Zidane looking at it. So it's imbalanced to begin with, and the half-time interval, a newsreel of events which happened around the world on that day, tries to give it a sort of existential weight it probably already had anyway. But this is fascinating. It might help to follow football as a sport, but Zidane is treated very much like a Herzogian genius, enigmatic and brooding, so that the film is very much a character study of loneliness, of being under pressure as an athlete, of being in and out of a game as part of a team. Its best moments are those in which the filmmakers refrain from cutting and let the camera watch in long-shot as Zidane stands and watches the game, in his own world, his white jersey contrasting against the green pitch, and thousands of fans watching on behind him; Mogwai's soundtrack compliments these moments greatly. It's one of those experiences that you only remember in fragmented images and tones, with a very weird, lingering feel of wanting to see it again. [The screening I saw missed an integral part of the film, which is Zidane's actual voice-over, or running commentary, at points in the match. The subtitles were there still, but for whatever reason, be it projection, speakers or print, the version I saw was devoid.]

Hard Candy
David Slade 2005 US 1st time; DVD
A 14-year-old girl meets up with a thirtysomething guy she met in an Internet chatroom, and, suspecting he is a paedophile, turns the tables on him.
Daring, challenging, certainly interesting film which must be admired - perhaps seen - for deciding to tackle such a difficult subject by grabbing it by the balls. That is not to say, however, that it does it particularly well, and it is interesting to see the limitations of representing paedophilia in Film; it is drastically miscast, for starters, and the script early on is interesting but possibly in the wrong way: we're cheering for the bad guy, because not only is the kid extremely annoying, but her acting and the lines she has to play with are flat. The camera is often static and the framing symmetrical, with its middle-class suburban house allowing characters to be shot against block solid colours - red, grey, white, pink, and so on. Besides visual sumptuousness, it's nothing less than ludicrous when you're watching; but upon reflection, it is probably worth revisiting again.

Last edited by Capo de La Cosa Nostra; 12/11/06 02:26 PM.
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