The Suburbs

Let’s take a moment to remember The Arcade Fire’s previous two albums. First up we have Funeral, a capital moment in music in the last decade. Funeral was an album about death, obviously. It was an album about the way death affects you while growing up; death’s distant but inescapable pull. Death’s pervasiveness. Its inevitability.  Funeral was so personal, you couldn’t help but think you’ve been listening to it since you were born after hearing it for the first time. It’s one of the few times I’ve felt an album’s existed way before its inception in 2004.

Then came Neon Bible, a valiant effort that brought no shame to the band after expectations that could have crushed others appeared. Neon Bible screamed of grandiose ideas, and scary thoughts in a changing world it descended upon.

Now of course, comes The Suburbs. If Funeral was about childhood and growing up, and Neon Bible was about being a grown-up and the angst that comes along with that, The Suburbs fits right between the two. The Suburbs is not about maturity, nor its onset. It’s about maturity’s realization, the singular moment in which one takes a break and realizes it’s over. Childhood’s over, and one knows not what to feel. The Arcade Fire have a clue or two and it comes in the shape of this album.

Black Swan

Black Swan opens up with a sweeping shot of Natalie Portman dancing in the spotlight. She’s dancing Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky’s well-known ballet. The simple, peaceful scene quickly goes awry as it’s a dream that quickly becomes a nightmare. Her partner grows feathers, and dons a monstrous visage. Not everything is what it seems with this scene, and the same can be said about the movie.

Say what you want about Aronofsky, but he’s a brave one. Some might regard making a movie about ballet as career suicide, so the idea of turning it into a psychological thriller seems overly ambitious if not downright pretentious. Aronofsky’s the man for the job though, and the result is nothing short of amazing.

Portman plays Nina Sayers, a talented but naïve ballerina who is about to be cast as both the White and the Black Swan a new, ambitious, production of Tchaikovsky’s opus. Portman’s Nina is technically sound as a dancer, and her sensitive nature makes her perfect for playing the White Swan. The Black Swan, on the other hand necessitates a sensual, dark performance, and Nina finds this role hard to live up to, much to the dismay of Vincent Cassel’s Thomas Leroy, the ballet’s director.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The only thing you can’t change is what you feel. It’s a true statement, but people still insist on ignoring it. Some artists seem to reach a point when they try to pretend either they’re more or less than they actually are. Enter Kanye West.Is there a more odd character in pop culture alive today? I’m sure there isn’t. On one hand, he’s madly egotistical, an explosion that keeps on happening, from the Hurricane Katrina George Bush line to the already infamous Taylor Swift fiasco. On the other, he’s a cold, intelligent and haunted man who realizes how far he’s come and that the scale of his celebrity should be scary especially for himself. Other artists simply ignore their sins, or create one-dimensional personas that prove to be lies along the road. Kanye exaggerates every facet of his life, without ever appearing to be fake. This crushing sincerity lies at the heart of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, Kanye’s best opus yet.

My attitude approaching Kanye’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” was one of cautious optimism. Other than that, though, I chose to have little to no expectations. A good choice it seems, because if anybody expected an apology for all previous mistakes, this album is far from one. Here, Kanye cranks it all up to 15 (he had already broken 11 some time ago.), and the results are nothing short of crazy. Crazy good.

The album opens up with “Dark Fantasy”, and its refrain seems a mission statement: “Can we get much higher?” After dropping some instant landmark-pop-culture-quips (like “Sex is on fire, I'm the King of Leon-a Lewis” or “mercy, mercy me, that Murcielago”) and showing us yet again how big his ego can actually get, he floors us with sad realizations (“The plan was to drink until the pain over/But what's worse, the pain or the hangover?”). The whole album is like this: there are moments when he boasts like few other can, but he never lets us forget how haunted he actually is (or thinks himself to be, it doesn’t really matter).Gorgeous’ hook is perfectly tackled by Kid Cudi, and this song most resembles the old Kanye, at least in a lyrical sense. Raekwon guest stars here, reminding us why he always will be one of the best.

“Power” is up next and it might just be the most exuberant song Kanye’s ever made. It’s here that the albums scope becomes apparent. Power’s the moment where Kanye passes being an artist (singer, composer, producer, whatever) and becomes something more. If Van Gogh had been a singer, this is what cutting his ear off would have sounded like. Power’s second half is especially beautiful, with Kanye realizing this would be “a beautiful death”.  The production values are sky high throughout, but if there’s one track I’d have to single out as a testament to West’s talent as a producer, this would be it.



After something as draining as “Power”, listeners need a moment to catch their breaths, so a short interlude introduces another highlight (really, when an album is so scarily good, how must the highlights look like?). “All of the lights” is chock full of surprises, from a touching nod to Michael Jackson’s still painful absence, to an unrecognizably good Fergie (who would have guessed she can be THAT good on the microphone?),to Rihanna’s best hook of her entire career (hands down) to (still conscious?) a piano solo by Alicia Keys and Elton John. I’m going to repeat that just in case you skipped that last sentence. Elton John guest stars on “All of the lights” That’s reason enough to buy the album. But underneath all that glamour, it’s still fundamentally sad, its lyrical themes brushing on solitude, betrayal and relationships destroyed by fame.

The next tracks are two gargantuan group efforts. The first one is aptly called “Monster”, in which Kanye reminds us all again that it’s a privilege we’re his contemporaries, that he’s the titular Monster and that he doesn’t care. The absolute gem here is Nicki Minaj’s verse, a collosal boast that will surely keep people up at night. Remember her name,because she’s about to go nuclear.
So Appalled is Kanye’s best team-up with Jay-Z (and a tantalizing taste of what’s to come with “Watch my throne”, their upcoming collaborative album), and the latter’s best verse in years. The two are joined by Pusha T, Prince Cy Hi, Swizz Beatz and The RZA and despite all the guests on these two tracks, they’re still all Kanye.

After passing its half mark, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” switches to sentimental mode, and Kanye’s still hauntingly melancholic. What’s scary about this album is that its egotistical moments do not detract from the sad ones, but enhance them. Every boast is better and more poignant because we know West has his demons he’s been trying to get rid of (just check out his Twitter feed, it’s easily the most fascinating one by a singer). “Devil in a New Dress” is a love song, with heavy soul influences, about short-lived romances that come up while touring. It’s sad, almost solemn, and when Rick Ross comes along and drops a verse that has absolutely nothing to do with that theme, one may think that it might diminish its value. It doesn’t, because for these 13 songs, Kanye can do no wrong.

“Runaway” might be this album’s highest peak. Kanye admits that perhaps he’s gone overboard (“you’ve been putting up my shit for way too long”) but then immediately decides to toast for all the assholes, douchebags, scumbags and jerk-offs of the world. Kanye suggests we should turn around and leave. By this moment in the album, it’s impossible. By the time West electronically distorts his voice (a la Radiohead circa 2001) it becomes obvious we’re in the presence of greatness. Here he strips his soul bare and blows away whatever doubts listeners might have: “Runaway” is a monumental achievement both artistically and humanly.

“Hell of a Life” features portions from Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, among others. Here, West dreams about getting in a serious relationship with a porn-star: marriage, kids and a big wedding. He’s thinking about a new creed to live by (“No more drugs for me/ Pussy and religion is all I need”), but by the end of the song, he gives it up. A song with such an up-tempo beat to it would have been a chart -topping single but have no depth to it. Kanye forever crushes the myth that grandiose production values detract from an album’s sentiment. It’s a sad, and the following song is positively heartbreaking.


“Blame Game” features John Legend singing his heart out, complex lyrics presented in three different voices (all in Kanye’s head, obviously), a eye-watering narrative that ends with a fictional conversation between Kanye’s former flame this song’s about and Chris Rock. It’s not the last surprise West’s got in store though: “Lost in the World” is a meld between a touching Bon Iver ballad and West’s stream-of-consciousness final words in the album, that practically define it. (“Your my devil,your my angel/Your my heaven, your my hell”). The song imperceptibly passes into the albums closer, passages from a Gil Scott-Heron spoken word poem about The American Dream. It couldn’t have closed any other album.

Rumors abound about the cost of this masterpiece (about three million US dollars), about Kanye’s strict rules while recording, including a dress code. They matter of course, but only in adding to the album’s allure and mystery and not its quality. You could get lost in this album: it begs to be listened from one end to the other. Songs meld one into another, attack your senses and make you forget inferior albums of the past. It’s a rewarding, exhausting experience that deserves to be taken seriously. Do not break it up in this song or that verse. As a listener, you owe it to yourself to listen to this album at least once as it was meant to be.

It’s hard to judge an album’s historical importance weeks removed from its launch, but I have a feeling that “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” will be regarded as one of the few albums that ended up actually being important and not just pretentious. When people will look back, they’ll refer to this album as “The Kanye Singularity”. That one moment when everything else faded, and for a little while at least, there was nothing else besides him, and his Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

10/10 Stefan

The Social Network

When I heard David Fincher, of Fight Club, Seven and Zodiac fame, was going to direct a movie about the founding (and subsequent lawsuits) of Facebook, I wasn't sure what to think. On one hand, you have one of the premiere directors of his time tackling a difficult subject that is more and more relevant in a less and less personal world. On the other, you have a movie about Harvard students writing code and becoming billionaires  after doing so (to their credit, in a visionary way). The Social Network had the potential to bomb. It also had the potential to be a damn good movie. I did not, however, expect it to be the best movie of Fincher's career. I did not expect it to be a funny, intense and exciting movie about geeks turning into gods. I did not expect it to be one of the best encapsulations of any generation's mores, or a harrowing snapshot of the zeitgeist we're all surrounded by. It's all of the above and more.


Fall 2003, Harvard University. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) gets dumped by his girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara, who'll get her remember-my-name role in Fincher's following adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy), gets drunk, blogs bad-bad things about Erica, writes some code, crashes Harvard's servers at four in the morning, and becomes infamous in the process, by means of a website that allows students to grade female undergrads by looks. He gets academic probation, but draws attention of the Winklevoss twins, who have a business proposition for him. Zuckerberg's only friend, Eduardo Saverin gets involved, and the rest is history. Or is it? The line between fact and fiction here is blurry, and, to be frank, irrelevant.

The acting is blissful, from top to bottom. Jesse Eisenberg pulls off one for the ages in portraying a conflicted and (don't laugh) tragic figure. He's tailor-made for this role, and never lets us fully hate Zuckerberg as much as we would want to, easily juggling between smart quips, geek-speak, and the near-autistic social interactions he has with the people that surround him. The twins are both portrayed by Armie Hammer, who goes all across the spectrum (The twins are, of course, complementary), and hasn't received nearly enough praise for his work here.

The unsung heroes of this movie, though, are Justin Timberlake and especially Andrew Garfield. Timberlake plays Sean Parker (of Napster fame) with a devilish ease. You never know just how much is crazy, how much is cold, calculated tact, and how much is both when he's on screen. Garfield steals the whole affair, locks it away, then rubs it in everybody's face. He's the only important guy here who we, as viewers, can fully empathize with, the only one who even tries to understand the scope of everything that's going on at a human level ( Zuckerberg and especially Parker have the business level of things handled, as far as that's concerned). All should and probably will get nods come award time, even more.

Fincher's mark is all over this movie, and if his track-record wasn't enough, this should be all the proof naysayers will need. He makes coding as exciting as bank-heists, if not more so, adapting what probably is a 3 hour script in a 2 hour assault upon the intellect. And it is. The script is insanely smart, full of blink-and-you-will-miss-them moments. See this one several times and I guarantee you will not be bored.


 I loved The Social Network, obviously. It also unsettled me a little. Thoughts of privacy, or rather lack-thereof ran through my mind after seeing it. Thoughts of betrayal. Fincher took a story that could have easily been feel-good movie material and turned it into a slap on the wrist of the very people that it's intended for. If you don't feel a little guilty for having a Facebook profile after seeing this one, you just don't get it. 

All of the above must sound like a documentary, or a very interesting story and just that. Not true, of course. It's also part satire (that doesn't get much stingier) and part social commentary. It's about relationships, hate, greed, cynicism and love. Fincher has filmed the unfilmable. A few years from now, they are going to be teaching courses about this one. After seeing The Social Network, I had an uncontrollable urge to see Citizen Kane. Praise shouldn't come higher than that. Some say it's going to be regarded as a cultural icon for my generation. I say it already is.

10/10 Stefan

The Expendables

Here's a crazy thought: What if you gathered all the greatest action movie stars ever, put them in one mega-movie, with a ridiculous plot, a huge body count, kick-ass explosions, and a lethal dose of testosterone? What if you actually got Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis on the screen at the same time?  If The Expendables would have been made twenty years ago, it probably would have been the greatest action movie imaginable, impossible to watch without your biceps exploding (whether you're a man or woman).On paper, The Expendables looks like a slam dunk, money in the bag.  So why does it suck?

First of all, because it's central idea is essentially flawed: bringing all these stars together is nothing like The Dream Team of Action Movies. Stallone is the major one to blame here, because he directed and wrote this abomination. Everybody needs a one-liner so badly, a signature kill, an awesome catchphrase, that this movie feels schizophrenic, crowded, and corny. Let's not even get started on the "writing". I haven't laughed out this loud since The Hangover, and that's not a good thing. It would be if The Expendables was thought out as a parody, or a deconstruction (try not to read that and laugh) of the genre, if it were a movie that's intentionally bad. I actually wonder how the actors said some of these lines with a straight face on, and let's not forget we're talking about people like Dolph Lundgren and Stallone here. Really, it's almost worth seeing just for the bad writing ( "Like bad Shakespeare", to quote it).

The plot is not worth mentioning, although it had promise (the entire movie had promise). Jet Li is the best of the bunch, he actually still feels dangerous at close to 50 years,while Terry Crews is funny in a scary sort of way. None of his lines are even close to funny, but his demeanor and exploits in this film will make me laugh forever (not a bad accomplishment actually). Eric Roberts is...I'm not even going to go there, Stallone is Stallone, Statham plays the same role he's played 10 movies running, and Mickey Rourke is here just to deliver cringe-worthy monologues about war and how it changes people.

I'm actually sorry for kids these days: I grew up watching these guys in good action movies, some of them in good movies period. The Expendables feels sacrilegious at times, and boring at others. In one scene, Dolph Lundgren fights Jet Li in hand to hand combat. Why did that not feel like something I want to watch over and over and over again? Why did the scene with The Trinity of Action Heroes make me want to puke instead of wanting to hit the gym? Why does The Expendables feel like the most disappointing movie ever?

All this bashing might lead to the conclusion that I had great expectations from The Expendables. I did not. I didn't expect The Godfather or Casablanca, I just wanted a blast from the past, that explodes really good for a few minutes, and then makes me want to see Die Hard again. Not a good movie, but an awesome movie. There's a difference, and I got neither. What I did get was a predictable and incoherent (as strange as that sounds) shamble of an excuse to make money at the box-office.

Maybe I'm too harsh. It's possible that by growing up, action movies no longer fill the same gap they did when I was young, and the old ones feel good by nostalgia value alone. So I decided to test that theory and watched one old movie with each of the poster boys. The ones that were not good, were awesome. Some were even both! So in the end, it's not me. I'll do myself a favor and forget The Expendables ever happened.

Here's a crazy thought: What if you gathered all the greatest action movie stars ever, put them in one mega-movie, with a ridiculous plot, a huge body count, kick-ass explosions, and a lethal dose of testosterone? What if you actually got Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis on the screen at the same time?  Wow, that's too awesome to exist, no use thinking about the impossible.

4/10 Stefan

Oldboy

Consider revenge for a minute. Few ideas have been more used, and abused by novelists, writers and film-makers. There's something about the bad guy getting what he deserves, about the idea that no matter how heinous the crime, retribution can be found. Revenge is great when creating dramas and action flicks, but it's even better when creating tragedies. Oldboy is such a tragedy, and one of the best movies ever made about revenge and its consequences.

The plot is deceivingly  simple, and for a reason. One will reasonably expect certain elements to be present in such a story, so director Park Chan-wook can play with our expectations. Smash them. Rebuild them, only to burn them down again. Oldboy starts out strong and is relentless, here's a movie that deserves the thriller adjective, but is so much more.

Oldboy is about Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik),a man who's kidnapped on a rainy evening after an altercation with the police. He's kept in imprisonment for fifteen years, with no apparent reason. Of course, after being released, one thing is on his mind, and one thing alone: revenge. From here, the plot meanders, from memorable scene to memorable scene, from revelation to revelation, to the ending (and what an ending). I'll avoid all spoilers, but the final third will find all viewers with their mouths agape, for varying reasons.
Park Chan-wook has created some instantly classical scenes for Oldboy (one fight scene steals the show, you'll know it when you see it), but they're part of a greater whole: no frame is gratuitous, all work on a level, and all have a distinct style. It's obvious why Tarantino praised Oldboy so much after seeing it at Cannes (where it won the Grand Prix): it's violent, stylized, with sharp dialogue  and numerous references to the classics (Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Shakespeare, Tarantino himself).

Oldboy is brilliantly acted: watched without subtitles, and not knowing anything about the plot, it's reasonable to expect a fairly intelligent viewer will catch on, and invest in the characters. Choi Min-sik is nothing short of fantastic in playing every human emotion in two hours. Watch his expression as it changes from scene to scene, it's obvious it's been a painstaking role to prepare, and a risk to take on. He deserves as much applause as the director, if not more so.  Kang Hye-jeong plays Mi-do, a sushi chef and the necessary female element for any good tragedy. Pay close attention to the moment in which Oh Dae-su meets Mi-do for the first time. It's a scene that generated a fair amount of controversy, but for all the wrong reasons. You'll want to rewind it after you see the movie, trust me.

To say more is to spoil, so I'll leave the plot at that. Director Park Chan-wook employs some fascinating camera angles and visual twists, making this a beautiful movie just to look at. Which is not to say that it's all style and no substance. One could write books about the themes and motifs in Oldboy. Which is not to say it's pretentious, like foreign cinema usually is.  It's simply a  bloody, deadly and remorseless movie.
 Oh Dae-su's story is more than simple catharsis, bordering on the tooth-grinding and heart-wrenching. Nit-pickers will surely find flaws in Oldboy. Some might even be right, but they are irrelevant.  Here's a movie that could have not existed in any other circumstances, that makes no excuses for itself. If you take one chance with oriental cinema, this should be it.

Consider revenge again after watching Oldboy. It's not the same,is it? Perhaps here lies Oldboy's true triumph: in trying to create a movie about revenge, Park Chan-wook does so much more. Oldboy is timeless and ravishing. Just as  Oh Dae-su's quest for revenge changes everything around him, and everything inside him, so does Oldboy for the viewer: after seeing this one, the very notion of revenge will never be the same again.

10/10 Stefan

Gone Baby Gone

One might expect that Ben Affleck should be the last one to attempt helming a movie based on a complex novel such as Gone Baby Gone. Dennis Lehane's novels have been adapted by the likes of Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, two directors with undeniable pedigree. Sure, Affleck is an Academy Award winner, for writing Good Will Hunting along Matt Damon, but writing and directing are two different things entirely. Most would have expected Affleck to fail, but Gone Baby Gone is an astonishing debut, one that erases all previous mistakes he made, even as an actor (yes, even Gigli).
 

Gone Baby Gone takes place in (where else?) Boston, Massachusetts, and focuses on the abduction of four-year-old local girl Amanda. It's the kind of case that brings neighborhoods together, the kind that moves people, the kind that is never solved. The police are doing their best, but grief-struck aunt Beatrice hires local investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to help as much as they can. Patrick is a smart guy with local connections, so he starts digging, hoping to find the truth. He does, but it's not pretty, and it carries a hefty price, as always.

Casey Affleck does a remarkable job as the quiet, but streetwise Patrick. He's easily the most identifiable character for the viewer, and his grief becomes ours from the onset. He would keep the movie together if he were surrounded by lesser actors. Fortunately for the viewer, he's not. Ed Harris continues to be one of the most underrated actors of his generation, playing Detective Remy Bressant, a hard-ass who's seen one case like this too many. Look into Bressant's eyes as Harris delivers each line. He combines humanity with cynicism, says more with each pause than others do with monologues. Morgan Freeman also graces the screen with his presence, although this one isn't exactly his usual spiel. Also worth mentioning is Amy Ryan, who received (almost undeservedly so) the most critical acclaim for her role as Amanda's damaged mother.
 

The plot is gritty and sad, and will pose questions for all attentive viewers (especially a sentence or two in the final few minutes that hit like a shotgun blast to the chest). The dialogue is sharp and some quotes are unforgettably delivered and written. Adapting such a novel was a daunting task, and Affleck shines: it's never confused, pathetic or preachy, as many similar-themed movies usually are.
 

Gone Baby Gone is a movie not to be missed: the Affleck brothers, with a little help here and there craft a movie that surpasses all expectations, defies clichés, and engages the viewer, without leaving him feeling cheap after the final pieces have fallen into place. It's a crime drama about people, the dark places some can go to, and the fact that making the right call is never easy.

10/10 Stefan