Author: Jenna Ipcar

Under The Skin: The Year Of The Surreal Continues

undertheskin

Under The Skin (2013)
Directed by Jonathan Glazer
Screenplay by Jonathan Glazer & Walter Campbell
Based on a novel by Michel Faber
108 min.

Spoilers ahead.

While waiting in line for the bathroom, I couldn’t help but overhear two women talking about the movie we had all just come from.

“Totally pointless. What was that even about?”

“Nothing.”

I guess on the surface I can see how this film could seem pointless. I mean, I get it—long silences, abstract cinematography, and alien invaders just don’t really do it for some people. However, I couldn’t help but think that maybe the reason they didn’t understand the movie was because they weren’t looking in the right place; this isn’t actually a movie about an “alien seductress [that] preys upon the population of Scotland” as its IMDB tagline says, it’s a movie about women and their place in modern society.

Continue reading Under The Skin: The Year Of The Surreal Continues

2014: A Good Year for Surrealist Movies

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If there’s one thing I love, it’s being lost, scared, and perplexed.

Okay, not really, but I do love me some surrealist movies. Any movie that forces me to constantly pay attention, actively find connections, and really work at interpreting pictures, sound, and dialogue is typically a good time for me.

A good surrealist movie always has a point. Sometimes the point is that it doesn’t have a point, but that can be enjoyable too—so long as it’s not just random nonsense, or completely abstract bullshit.

I went to see a talk with David Lynch at BAM a couple months back and he actually brought up this exact point, to my delight. He was responding to a question on why exactly he refuses to give any solid interpretation of his work. His answer was that he thought it was important for art to be analyzed from all angles—to give one ‘definitive’ interpretation is to stifle all other paths of growth. He went on to say that if the director’s intent is presented well then it will open up to deeper interpretation from other sources, meanings that even the author themselves may not have realized.

A good film is absolutely that, and a good surrealist film takes it a step further—its constant twists and turns eventually culminate to a beautiful larger picture. 

This year has been a pretty good one for new surrealist movies—we’re only half way through and I’ve already seen four new ones in theaters! Even better, I absolutely loved all of them:

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The Wolf of Wall Street: Fuck This Movie, Fuck Jordan Belfort, Fuck The Audience, And, I Guess, Fuck Me Too

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET


The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay by Terence Winter
180 min.

Spoilers ahead.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. No siree.

I’d gone to the theater that snowy midday to see Inside Llewyn Davis again. I just wanted to once more curl up in some good ol’ depressing Coen brothers greatness, goddammit. But it was sold out! And the only movie that wasn’t was ol’ Martin Scorsese’s newest– The Wolf of Wall Street. I’d had mixed feelings about seeing it to begin with, but my boredom outweighed my uncertainty and I figured ‘ah, what the hell.’

Ah, I left the theater fuming with anger. I don’t just mean annoyed—I mean actually fuming mad and ranting about it in public. My anger seemed to stem from my inability to understand if this movie was brilliantly orchestrated as a relentless and morally superior lecture, or if was just a passive and amoral romp, letting the viewer decide what’s right and wrong. What I did know was that I resented the hell out of it—and I needed yell so from the top deck of my million dollar yacht in front of a thousand of my closest friends.
Continue reading The Wolf of Wall Street: Fuck This Movie, Fuck Jordan Belfort, Fuck The Audience, And, I Guess, Fuck Me Too

Jenna Ipcar’s 2013 in Film

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I watched 71 films this year! More impressively, 29 of those films actually came out this year! That might be a record for me, seeing as I mostly seek out movies that are over thirty years old. Man, 29! I’m not going to even think about how much money that was.

That said, 2013 was a year of ‘meh’ for me, as far as new releases were concerned.  I felt let down by a lot of the big buzz movies: 12 Years a Slave was superbly acted, but felt disjointed; Gravity managed to not excite me visually or emotionally; Frances Ha just felt like Baumbach’s version of Girls; Elysium was a snooze fest where I found myself rooting for the bad guys because they at least had more character. I was also excited for both Star Trek: Into Darkness and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and while neither particularly disappointed me (well, the whole Star Trek reboot I’ve always had issues with, but whatever) they didn’t excite me either.

I was, however, surprised by a couple of movies I saw on a lark: The Bling Ring was surprisingly watchable, Saving Mr. Banks was genuinely well done, Blue is the Warmest Color wasn’t entirely French junk, and The World’s End was a ton of fun. I also would include Wolf of Wall Street in this category, but I’ll be expounding on that one at a later date. [Update: Here you go.]

So, here’s my list of the best and the worst, aka, the movies that, at the very least, made me say something other than “Meh.”
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Male Gaze, Female Snooze: A Review of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

Adele Exarchopoulos Lea Seydoux


Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
Screenplay by Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix
Adapted from the comic book ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ by Julie Maroh
179 min.

Spoiler-free.

As a jaded New Yorker, I typically don’t drool over well-reviewed movies on principle. I’m skeptical of ‘buzz’ and ‘hype’ of any kind, and this overhyped movie in particular seemed to be generating some intriguingly divisive opinions. Between the overwhelming amount of reviewers (largely male) heralding it as “breathtaking,” and the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, calling it a flat-out straight mens’ porno fantasy, I found myself reading articles about the controversy before I even knew it was a movie slated to come out.

Now call me biased, but I’m going to trust the lesbian author over the male French director when it comes to who really “gets” lesbian love and sex. And as such, I did what any dismissive, self-respecting woman would do and wrote it off as something to miss. But eventually, the whole fantastic vs. awful rhetoric—plus some light peer pressuring from a coworker—finally got me off my ass and into the theater to give it a fair shot. Hey, we already know I’m down to make myself miserable when it comes to movies, so why not?
Continue reading Male Gaze, Female Snooze: A Review of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’