Day: April 11, 2011

HBO publicists didn’t invite me to see Todd Haynes‘ Mildred Pierce miniseries in advance, but I’ve seen two episodes so far (#1 and #3) and found it pretty absorbing. I’d read that it might be a wee bit sluggish, but I wasn’t the least bit impatient or disengaged with any of it. I believed every shot, line and scene. And it’s obviously very well acted by everyone (and I haven’t even gotten to Evan Rachel Wood‘s section yet).

Kate Winslet‘s performance as the struggling titular character, a role previously owned by Joan Crawford in the 1945 Hollywood version, uncovers something anxious and frumpy and unmistakably genuine in herself. I think it’s one of her finest.

I read that Mildred Pierce opened to disappointing ratings. I’m guessing the numbers haven’t dramatically shot up since, and if so that’s a shame.

Last week’s Vulture‘s Jane Mulkerrins asked Haynes about criticism that the series is a bit too slow and luxuriant. “I’m sure some viewers are not up for this experience,” Haynes replied. “I don’t agree, but it is all according to people’s tastes. I think it’s good for us, in our era of constant distraction and digital multitasking, bite-size information and endless texting, to have an experience where you actually move through someone’s life without leaping hysterically, flashing forward, and jumping around.

“I’ve never done anything this doggedly linear in my career as a filmmaker, and that’s what the novel does — it spans nine years. The novel is intensely, realistically linear, and that is one of the challenges that I took on. I think if you enjoy getting in-depth, and you enjoy following characters over time, you will enjoy this. It’s an experience that is more akin to reading a novel than watching a single film. And with these performances, and this amazing era that you get to travel through, there’s an awful lot to enjoy beyond just the narrative.”

Okay, maybe not “dead” but I’m getting enervated expectation vibes from all but a few April films. It feels worse than January-February right now. I haven’t yet seen The Double Hour (opening Friday) or Water for Elephants (4.22) or Prom (which screened for karaoke-singing junketeers last weekend) or Atlas Shrugged (the Tea Party movie) or 13 Assassins or Stake Land or Rio but I’m scanning the list and muttering to myself, “This?”

And with May just around the corner the summer-crap tentpolers (Pirates of the Caribbean, Effin’ Thor, The Hangover Part II, Kung Fu Panda 2) will soon be ruling (smothering?) the conversation. Thank God for the diversion of the Cannes Film Festival.

Bertrand Tavernier‘s The Princess of Montpensier (IFCFilms) is the best film opening this weekend that I’ve actually seen, and Werner Herzog‘s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (IFCFilms, 4.29) is…okay, minor Herzog, but the unusually geological, take-it-or-leave-it 3D photography makes it worth catching in a theatre with glasses.

Almost everyone was underwhelmed by Robert Redford‘s The Conspirator (4.15) at last September’s Toronto Film Festival. (I was surprised by how History Channel lifeless it felt.) Atlas Shrugged, also opening on Friday, has barely been shown to press, but is apparently/obviously a Tea Party movie that will die a quick death. Scream 4 (4/15) is something you either pay to see or you don’t, but conversational buzz is probably not an option.

Water for Elephants (4.22) hasn’t screened for anyone I know and isn’t having press screenings until next Wednesday, or two days before opening.

What else? I wouldn’t see Incendies again on a bet. I still haven’t seen Morgan Spurlock‘s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and won’t be seeing it until next week. Nobody wants to even acknowledge Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (4.22). I respect and admire Takashi Miike and the quality that has reportedly gone into his 13 Assassins (4.29) but Asian battleswords have never been my cup of tea. All I remember about the Sundance 2010 showings of Mark Ruffalo‘s Sympathy for Delicious is Ruffalo stating that “we got our asses handed to us by the critics and we’re still here.”

A five-second clip of a CG WETA monkey from Rise of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox, 8.5)? That’s it? But this, for me, is a more interesting hybrid-simian than the kind Tim Burton created ten years ago, and way better than the Rodeo Drive monkeys in Franklin J. Schaffner‘s 1968 original.

This is a chimp, obviously. It looks more or less like a “real” one instead of a human wearing an ape suit. The ears are well done and so, especially, are the intelligent eyes. The eyes, in fact, reminded me a little bit of the “Dawn of Man” apes in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey — still the high-water mark in this realm.

Rupert Wyatt‘s sci-fi-adventure, an origin story set in present-day San Francisco, costars James Franco, John Lithgow, Freida Pinto, Andy Serkis and Brian Cox. The generic p.r. paragraph says it’s “a reality-based cautionary tale, a science fiction/science fact blend, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.”

Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Double Hour (Samuel Goldwyn, 4.15) “is a tremendous flick that [will] probably be remade by Hollywood with Katherine Heigl starring and McG directing with a tacked-on happy ending. Until then we have the original — a brutal, beautiful fusion of The Vanishing, A History of Violence, Mulholland Drive and Les Diaboliques” — 3.28 Quickflix review by Simon Miraudo.

Miraudo also called it “a haunting meditation on grief and guilt masquerading as an intense psychological murder mystery.”

John Anderson‘s 4.8 N.Y. Times story about spoilers mentioned that The Double Hour “faces information age challenges to keep its plot secret.”

I haven’t seen The Double Hour on either coast, but I’ve asked the good people at Ginsberg-Libby for help in that regard.