Damsels in Distress

2012 at the Movies: biggest disappointments

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DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

1. I haven’t seen Undefeated, the Oscar winning documentary about an underdog high school football team, or the French political thriller The Minister (L’exercice de l’État )   because – as far as I know – they haven’t yet been released in the US.  How can an Oscar winner not get a release?  You can read descriptions and watch trailers of these films as Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

2.  There was also no US release for the hilarious Norwegian curling comedy King Curling or the creepy Slovak voyeur thriller Visible World.  I think that, given a chance, American audiences would have responded to both of them.

3.  Sometimes my favorite filmmakers let me down.  There wasn’t much to Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, which I had been eagerly awaiting for months.

Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona) hadn’t made a film for thirteen years and then came up with Damsels in Distress. With the tedious Greta Gerwig.  Really, Whit?

And I thought that Aardman Studios’ Pirates! Band of Misfits was a bore.

Note: I don’t have a Worst Ten Movie list because, unlike professional critics, I don’t have to see every movie.  I do see over 100 new movies each year, but I try REALLY, REALLY HARD to avoid the bad movies.  So my worst movie going experience is always either 1)  on an airline flight when I see a movie that I normally wouldn’t; 2) a hyped art film that disastrously falls on its face and/or really pisses me off (The White Ribbon); or 3) something I find on cable TV while channel surfing (Paul Blart: Mall Cop).  But usually, the culprit finds its way aboard a long airline flight.  Not this year.

4.  That being said,  the worst film that I saw was probably Dorfman, which would have derailed if it had started out on the rails.

 

Movies to See This Week

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HEADHUNTERS

For sheer entertainment, I recommend the Norwegian dark comedy Headhunters, with Aksel Hennie as a smug corporate headhunter/art thief who panics when a high tech commando hunts him down.

The must-see movie in theaters now remains Monsieur Lazhar, the story of French-Canadian fifth graders recovering from a traumatic experience with their replacement teacher, an Algerian immigrant. It’s an emotionally compelling film that was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Last week’s releases were middling.  The best of the bunch, the romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement, is intelligent, authentic and leisurely with some chuckles.    The Hunter is a paranoid thriller, starring Willem Dafoe as a professional hunter sent to the primordial forests of Tasmania.  Pirates! Band of Misfits is a merely amusing offering from the masters of claymation, Aardman Studios (Wallace and Gromit); don’t pay extra to see it in 3D.

I haven’t yet seen the very promising The Exotic Marigold Hotel which opens this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s World War I epic.

 

Movies to See this Week

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Aksel Hennie and friend in HEADHUNTERS

For sheer entertainment, I recommend the Norwegian dark comedy Headhunters, with Aksel Hennie as a smug corporate headhunter/art thief who panics when a high tech commando hunts him down.

The must-see in theaters remains Monsieur Lazhar, the story of French-Canadian fifth graders recovering from a traumatic experience with their replacement teacher, an Algerian immigrant. It’s an emotionally compelling film that was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Last week’s releases were middling.  The best of the bunch, the romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement, is intelligent, authentic and leisurely with some chuckles.  The Hunter is a paranoid thriller, starring Willem Dafoe as a professional hunter sent to the primordial forests of Tasmania.  Pirates! Band of Misfits is a merely amusing offering from the masters of claymation, Aardman Studios (Wallace and Gromit); don’t pay extra to see it in 3D.

You can skip Damsels in Distress, Whit Stillman’s misfire of an absurdist campus comedy.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is Haywire, Steven Soderbergh’s rockem sockem spy action thriller, introducing the mixed martial arts star Gina Carano.

Damsels in Distress: say it ain’t so, Whit

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What writer-director Whit Stillman does really well is bring us unto the world of old money Eastern preppies with their refined manners and their odd customs like debutante balls.  His well-educated characters have earnest late-night existential conversations in complete sentences.  Nobody else does this, and Stillman’s dialogue has always kept me wholly absorbed.  That’s why I liked his films Metropolitan and Barcelona so much.

What Stillman does not do well is absurdist film, like his current entry, Damsels in Distress, set in a Northeastern liberal arts college that is decidedly non-Ivy.  Indie film darling Greta Gerwig plays the seriously off-kilter leader of some coeds who are intent on rescuing fellow students from depression, fashion mistakes and bad hygiene, whether they want it or not.

While his earlier films were earnestly realistic, Damsels is way over the top.  The girls’ boyfriends are so stupid that one does not yet know his colors.  Gerwig’s character is so obviously disturbed that anyone, even a horny college male, would run the other way.

That means that the patter of Stillman’s dialogue must carry the day, and it fails him.  Gerwig’s two friends are one-note jokes – one profoundly stupid, the other profoundly suspicious – that aren’t that funny the first time.  There are lame body odor jokes.  The fraternity system uses Roman, rather than Greek letters – which is not the sidesplitter that Stillman may imagine.

For sure, there are some funny moments.  At the campus Suicide Prevention Center (the word “Prevention” keeps falling off the sign)  Gerwig offers a fellow student a doughnut, but then snatches it back after one bite when she discovers that he isn’t the suicidal one.  One student has adopted the Cathar religion, which he associates with a certain sexual practice.  But, over all, the movie is not funny.  Worst of all, it’s not engaging.

Analeigh Tipton, who was very good as the smitten babysitter in Crazy Stupid Love, does especially well again as a transfer student who falls under Gerwig’s wing.

My recommendations:  1) Stillman should leave the absurdism to Bunuel and 2) the rest of us can skip Damsels to watch Metropolitan and Barcelona.