The 2021 Cannes Film Festival is on its last days, and almost all Competition titles have premiered. The latest were new films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Bruno Dumont and Nabil Ayouch. The Thai director's Memoria has already been met with raves by fans, though, as ever, his work continues to be unfit for all tastes. Some audiences aren't into slow-cinema. Dumont's France, however, got full-on boos, while Ayouch's Casablanca Beats was deemed a possible contender for the Palme d'Or. We'll know the jury's choices on Saturday. For now, let's indulge in cinematic reminiscence as we look back at these artist's previous triumphs. They include a poetic reverie complete with an interspecies sex scene, a funny serial killer movie, and a film that drove irate people to attack its cast…
Year in Review Fun... Much more to come!Herewith the 20th minute and 11th second of the movies of 2011 in chronological order of US release date. It's like flipping channels for snapshots of the film year! For those who like a mnemonic challenge, I've written the film titles in invisible ink below each screencap (you can highlight to see them). Would any of these tiny glimpses make you want to stop channel surfing and watch?
Bereft of inspiration today, Nathaniel turns to box office, the thing everyone else talks about elsewhere on the interwebs. Endure it! I have questions.
Top Ten 01 new RANGO $38 02 new THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU $21.1 03 new BEASTLY $9.8 04 HALL PASS $8.8 (cumulative: $26.8) 05 GNOMEO & JULIET $7.2 (cumulative: $84) 06 UNKNOWN $6.5 (cumulative: $53) 07 JUST GO WITH IT $6.4 (cumulative: $88.1) 08 THE KING'S SPEECH $6.2 (cumulative: $123.5) 09 I AM NUMBER FOUR $5.7 (cumulative: $46.4) 10 JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER $4.2 (cumulative: $68.8)
Because I am finally free of Oscar season time constraints, I'll let you choose which new release from this week and next I should watch next to remount the "right now" movie horse. Obviously I need no push to get to JANE EYRE (Fassy! Mia!) so I left it off the list. Which other one should I write about?
Also how sad is it that a movie no one seems to like at all (Just Go With It) will now be one of Nicole Kidman's highest grossers in many years? The world -- and by world I mean movie theaters. Duh! -- would be an infinitely better place if this and Rabbit Hole ($2 million) switched cumulative grosses. Imagine the ripples in Hollywood moviemaking if female-led dramas with tremendous performances won default ticket purchases and sexist lazy comedies had to earn Oscar nominations to win any attention at all! Heh.
Other new releases: Take Me Home Tonight ($3 million), Happythankyoumoreplease ($35,000) and Uncle Boonmeereviewed ($27,800) which had a great first weekend take for a difficult movie that waited 10 months to capitalize on its Cannes hoopla. It should easily outgross Apichatpong Weerathesakul's biggest US market hit which was Tropical Malady (2005) which didn't earn that much until its fifth week in theaters.
Top 10 Foreign Films This Year (Thus Far) 01 BIUTIFUL w/ Javier Bardem $4,200,000+ 02 YAMLA PAGLA DEEWANA $993,000+ 03 OF GODS AND MEN $818,000+ 04 DHOBI GHAT (MUMBAI DIAIRIES) $576,000+ 05 7 KHOOM MAAF $268,000+ 06 EVEN THE RAIN w/ Gael García Bernal $230,000+ 07 IP MAN 2 $182,000+ 08 WHAT WOMEN WANT w/ Gong Li and Andy Lau $123,000+ 09 THE HOUSEMAID $117,000 + 10 POETRY $114,000+ don't miss it!
Asian hits of 2011
So happy that people are noticing South Korean's actressy cinema (#9 & #10) post Mother (2009).
At the subtitled speciatly box office we continue to see that if you want to make any money at all it helps to be a Bollywood feature (even with zero media attention you can earn money. See: #2,4,5). The second easiest way to sell tickets is to have a beloved star in the lead role.
Of Gods and Men's terrific opening and Even the Rain's pretty solid one suggests -- at least to this foreign film Oscar enthusiast -- that they should not have waited for a nomination for release. If there was this much interest despite snubs, imagine how much extra sympathy press they would have gotten had they already had "hit" status and then got snubbed. Of Gods and Men obviously didn't need the Oscar buzz to sell tickets and Even the Rain always had Gael García Bernal and instant recognition factor (Christopher Columbus related) going for it... Meanwhile, below this top ten lay the remains of other Oscar snubbees who waited to see how the Academy would treat them before sticking a toe in the US market: Argentina's Carancho ($39,000) German's When We Leave ($19,000) and Romania's If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle ($12,000). The biggest foreign flop this year has to be Ong Bak 3 right? The first film in this Tony Jaa muay thai trilogy was a major art house hit earning nearly $5 million stateside and $20 million worldwide but the novelty wore out fast and/or they waited way too long to capitalize on interest and/or the sequels weren't very good? For the record I suspect it was a lethal combo of all of the above. I enjoyed the first one a lot and couldn't stomach the second which flopped in the US but it surprised me how long it took for them to make a sequel. For a year there in the mid Aughts I totally thought Tony Jaa was going to be the next international action star but then... crickets.
Heartbeats cast: Dolan, Schneider and ChokriIn other news, just because I like the film quite a lot, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats has earned $18,000 to date but is still in theaters and available on demand. I feel like this would have done much better had his debut film I Killed My Mother had a real release in the States to build awareness of the new auteur. (I still read conflicting reports about whether or not it actually ever opened in the US and if it's that hard to know...).
On the subject of teeny tiny grosses, Germany's crime drama The Robber, which I didn't particularly "like" but which was unquestionably exciting and well-made on a technical level, has earned $5,000. It's already lined up for an English language remake (possibly with Andrew Garfield) and while I can see them trumping the film on an emotional engagement level, I think they'll be hardpressed to duplicate this one's technical virtuosity and cumulative white knuckle effect. It is scary intense.
Here's the trailer for The Robber which actually does a good job of not giving the movie's best moments / surprises away.
Editor's Note: This review was originally published last year. Uncle Boonmee is now in theaters, ready to capitalize on its big win at Cannes... uh...10 months ago; way to strike while the iron is hot, distributors! If you're just getting a chance to see it for the first time, The Film Experience would love to hear any reactions.
Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives. My memory is hardly as uncanny. Recalling or describing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Cannes Palme D'Or winner and Thailand's 2010 Oscar submission, even a few days after the screening is mysteriously challenging. Even your notes won't help you.
This is not to say that the movie isn't memorable, rather that its most memorable images and stories refuse direct interpretation or cloud the edges of your vision, making it as hazy as the lovely cinematography. You can recall the skeletal story these images drift towards like moths and you can try to get to know the opaque characters that see them with you but these efforts have a low return on investment. What's important is the seeing.
What's wrong with my eyes? They are open but I can't see a thing.
Most synopses of the movie will only embellish on the film's title. And while Uncle Boonmee does reflect on past lives, he only does so directly in the pre-title sequence as we follow him in ox form through an attempted escape from his farmer master, who will eventually rope him back in. The bulk of the film is not a recollection -- at least not from Boonmee himself, but a slow march towards his death while he meditates on life and the film meditates on animal and human relations. His nephew and sister in law, who objects to his immigrant nurse, visit him. So too does his dead wife and another ghostly visitor on the same night, in a bravura early sequence that as incongruously relaxed as it is eery and startling.
The film peaks well before its wrap with the story of a scarred princess and a lustful talking catfish and then we begin the march towards Boonmee's death, perhaps the most literal moment in the movie. And then curiously, the movie continues on once he's gone. If it loses much of its potency after Boonmee has departed, there are still a few fascinating images to scratch your head over when he's gone.
The bifurcated structure that Weerathesakul has employed in the past is less prevalent this time. Uncle Boonmee plays out not so much like two mysteriously reflective halves (see the haunting Tropical Malady which I find less accessible but actually stronger), but rather like a series of short films that all belong to the same continuous chronological movie, give or take that gifted horny catfish.
Surely a google search, press notes, academic analysis or listening to the celebrated director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerathesakul speak (as I did after the screening) would and can provide direct meaning to indirect cinema. But what's important is the seeing.
Vision is frequently mentioned and referenced in Uncle Boonmee, whether it's mechanical as in a preoccupation with photography or organic. But like the ghost monkey with glowing red eyes (the film's signature image) says to Uncle Boonmee early in the film, "I can't see well in the bright light." It's the one exchange in the film that I wholly related to and understood. I'm not sure I need or even want to understand, to attach specific meaning to these confounding stories and images. That's too limiting. I only want to see them. Weerasethakul's movie is best experienced in the dark, with the images as spiritual guides. They fall around you like mosquito netting as you walk slowly through the Thai jungle. B+
Friday, July 16, 2021 at 10:17AM 
