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Sicktime film ratings

Sick this week, I have had time to watch quite a few films. Some were excellent, some mediocre, a couple pretty bad. In case it is of interest (and to keep my brother happy by making a long post) I offer a review here. Ranking movies quantitatively can be near-impossible (not to mention foolish), but I do my best to rank the following films in descending order of my preference.

Cabaret Balkan: This film is entitled Bure Baruta in the Serbo-Croatian. It is difficult to keep this review anything but an exercise in superlatives. The plot is deeply symbolic, with each of the characters seemingly an archetype, or, as one reviewer put it, “an aspect of the Balkan psyche.” My knowledge of the specific history of the region is limited so many of the references are probably lost on me, but many themes are comprehensible without context: perceived emasculation under an oppressive regime, the resort of a traumatized people to absurdism, a status quo of mutually accepted violence smoothly escalating to murder, the blinding effects of nationalism. In one vignette, the author seems to contend that “Western cleverness” cannot be transposed into the Balkans, which is something to ruminate on. Despite a few heavy-handed allegories (for instance, the young activist who takes a bus full of people hostage, intent on making the passengers aware of their surroundings and angry at injustices, and is killed by the official driver just as his message begins to sink in) the symbolism is effective. The use of an absurdist, effeminate, decadent cabaret performer as the vehicle for direct authorial voice intrigues me. The film is marked by magnificent acting (excepting a few minor characters), especially from Nebojsa Milovanovic, Mirjani Jokovic, Aleksandar Bercek, and Nebojsa Glogovac; the former two offered portrayals that I expect to be seared into my memory for life. I rated this movie 9 at IMDB.
Memento: I don’t remember the last time a suspense film has been this effective for me. It takes the feeling of the last minutes of The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, or Se7en and extends it over a two-hour film. I recommend you do not de-Rot13 the following unless you have seen the movie already. N srj cbvagf bs cflpubybtl ner n ovg jrnx (pna bar ernyyl ratenva pbzcyrk ireony zrzbevrf guebhtu pbaqvgvbavat?) naq guvf gnxrf njnl sebz gur chapu bs gur raqvat fyvtugyl. Ohg V jnf pnhtug hc va gur pyrirearff, gur gehr fhfcrafr nf gb jung jnf tbvat ba, naq gur terng npgvat. Gur fpevcg frrzf irel rnfl gb jevgr cbbeyl naq irel qvssvphyg gb jevgr jryy. Puevfgbcure Abyna (jub nyfb qverpgrq vg) unf jevggra vg jvgu terng fxvyy. I strongly recommend seeing it without even reading the back of the box. I rated this movie 9 at IMDB.
Genghis Blues: Like many people, I expect, I was first introduced to the culture and music of Tuva through Richard Feynman’s books. A few years back I purchased Deep in the Heart of Tuva from the always-cool Ellipsis Arts…. The mini-book that accompanies the CD discussed the fascinating Tuvan rituals and culture. When Genghis Blues, a film chronicling blues musician Paul Pena’s trip to Tuva debuted at Sundance, I knew I had to see it. Unfortunately I missed it in the theatres, and I have waited until this week to see it. It is a charming, sometimes heartbreaking, at all times amazing story. Pena, who is blind, taught himself Tuvan throatsinging by ear; he also taught himself the Tuvan language at home using an electronic text reader, translating Tuvan texts letter-by-letter into Russian, then translating from the Russian to English (no Tuvan-to-English dictionaries existed.) The film, though marred at times by amateurish photography, shows the beauty and generosity of Tuva and its people, the courage and devotion of Pena, and the enchanting and haunting Tuvan throatsinging in a more in-depth fashion than I have yet seen. I highly recommend this film, which I rated 8 at IMDB.
The Gift: This film, about a psychic woman’s investigation of a murder, is one of those films in which the quality of the final product is far better than it has any right to be. Based on a cheesy, formulaic plot and featuring uninterestingly-written characters, this film is redeemed by the top-notch acting talent who imbue the characters with magnificent depth. The always-amazing chameleon Cate Blanchett provides a convincing portrayal, as do Giovanni Ribisi and Greg Kinnear (who is showing himself to be quite a talented actor.) Katie Holmes is miscast (about five years to young for the role) and Keanu Reeves (an actor whose performances I sometimes respect) is barely competent, but they are made up for by the trio I mentioned first. The plot could have been ten times better, but the acting talents commandeer the reins and turn a cheesy pseudo-suspense film into an interesting, if predictable, character-driven story. The acting leads me to rate this as high as 6.5; this turns into 6 on IMDB’s scale.
Willow: I have not seen this charming family-film fantasy since the late ’80s, when I enjoyed it much more. There are charming touches to be sure (the dwarf Nelwyn referring to the normal Homo sapiens as “giants” and using miniature horses as mounts, for instance) but the film in general comes up lacking. Sets look cheap and unimpressive, there are plenty of obvious façades, and the plot lacks a true climax. Val Kilmer as Madmartigan, the self-proclaimed “greatest swordsman who ever lived” is fun to watch, as is (for entirely different reasons) the gorgeous Joanne Whalley, but the good points are not enough for me to rate this above 5 at IMDB.
Vatel: This film is a period-piece-for-the-sake-of-making-a-period piece, an overindulgent costume drama, a story in search of a plot. The sad and depressing elements of it are simply not balanced by sufficient quality, and I was left thinking “that’s it?” at the end of it. Uma Thurman and Gerard Depardieu are both talented actors, but they are given nothing to work with in this film and (unlike in The Gift, reviewed above) predictably make nothing of it. There is a certain foolishness that embraces swooning, unrequited love stories regardless of how trite and vacuous they are; this film falls into that category. “Oh, isn’t this film lovely and romantic?” Well, frankly, no. This gets a 4 from me.
The 6th Day: OK, what can I say? This is the enantiomorph of Vatel, which I review above. Perhaps to satisfy some cosmic symmetry, this film provides the vacuous, trite “guy film” counterpart to the vacuous, trite “chick flick”. Cheesy psuedoscience runs through it, the kind that makes one wish they hadn’t bothered trying to explain the premise in the first place. Arnold is Arnold, true to form. The jokes are lame, the effects high-budget but unoriginal, the script the thinnest vellum placed over a camp-wannabee star vehicle. Arnold intones, in his strong bass, “You cloned the wrong man!” You now have the entirety of the story as well as a large serving of the cheese, and you have saved yourself the $4.50 you might have spent renting the DVD. This gets a generous 4 from me.

Out of curiosity I checked IMDB’s user ratings of these films; aside from moving Cabaret Balkan from slot #1 to slot #3, my ordering is the same as the ordering of the amassed IMDB scores: