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Martin Paule's Micro Movie Reviews: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z-

Vacas

Julio Medem who directed the excellent Lovers of the Arctic Circle, also reviewed here, made this film as his first feature. A meditation on love, rivalry, nationalism, and cowardice, it concerns a pair of families in the Basque region of Spain who are locked in a multi-generational feud that spans the time between the second Carlist War in the mid-19^th century and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. At times the film is a bit difficult to follow (perhaps a result of my minimal knowledge of Spanish history) but compensates with captivating photography and the copious use of symbolism and magic realism.

Veronico Cruz aka La Dueda Interna

The title character is a boy born to an impoverished family in the Andean foothills of Argentina. His mother dies while giving birth and his father goes off to work in distant cane fields leaving Veronico in the care of a wizened grandmother. This is an austere film that is nearly as bleak in its outlook as is the terrain in which it is filmed. What makes the film appealing is the arrival of a schoolteacher who takes the eager but unschooled Veronico under his wing. While life goes on in the remote village, coups occur in Buenos Aires with repercussions that occasionally impact the town culminating with the ill-advised war against Great Britain over the Falkland Islands. A powerful sense of place created through magnificent photography and a haunting score produce an indelible impression. This is a rather obscure film well worth seeking out.

Victim

This 1961 British film deals with homosexuality, preiously a verboten subject in movies. Though its treatment of the subject would be seen as cautious in the extreme today, it was a groundbreaking film in its day, one that was banned in the in the U.S.. Dirk Bogarde plays a brilliant, closeted barrister who has been nominated to become a Queen's Counselor and becomes embroiled in a blackmail scheme in which gays are targeted with exposure. In that era, the mere status of being gay spelled the ruination of those fingered, and as gays, victims were in violation of British law making recourse to the police a Catch-22 proposition. Bograde puts his reputation on the line in order to resist the extortionists. The ginger handling of the subject matter is fascinating to watch in light of our more liberal mores today. As both a character study and a crime story the film functions well with a cleverly fashioned script that keeps us guessing. It's interesting to note that Bogarde's agent warned him against taking the role feeling it would doom his acting career. That proved advice proved wrong. Bogarde himself was gay though he never acknowledged that fact, maintaining in the memoir that he wrote about the death of his partner Tony Forwood, an actor-agent relationship.    

A Very Long Engagement

Far darker than her breakthrough film Amelie, Audrey Tatou plays a young Frenchwoman who relentlessly searches for her lover who by all accounts was killed during WWI. Director Jean Jeunet’s typically convoluted plotting and glorious cinematic sensibilities are in full force here as Tatou slowly pieces together the fate of her boyfriend while becoming embroiled in the lives and stories of a handful of other soldiers, who along with him, were sentenced to death for attempting to escape the war with self-inflicted wounds. 

Va Savoir

Director Jacques Rivette takes his time in turning up the heat in his construction of this farce about an actress whose real life and role in a play about an amnesiac begin to blur and merge. Stick around as things begin to spin out of control with multiple mix-ups and misunderstandings. This former critic of the Cahiers du Cinema and co-architect of the French New Wave has made a highly unexpected and witty film.

Vera Drake

Mike Leigh's dolorous story concerns a woman who is the classic good wife; she is cheerful with a pleasant word for everyone; she makes daily rounds helping shut-ins and invalids, and she helps young girls gratis when they are in trouble. It is this latter service that gets Vera Drake in serious trouble when one of the girls she has helped to abort her child becomes ill and is hospitalized. Imelda Staunton offers a stunningly real performance as Drake and Leigh's script and direction offer a precise picture of life in working-class London in 1950. He carefully avoids melodrama; the police are human and mostly humane and Drake's family comes to terms with her predicament without histrionics.

Vengo

French director Tony Gatlif has made a career out of films about gypsies with his Latcho Drom being the best of the lot. This film looks at world of flamenco in Southern Spain and presents several performances of enormous power and viatlity. A tacked-on and superficial story about vengeance seems completely unecessary and detracts from the singular joy of the music. If it's a tossup, see Latch Drom, a celebration of gypsy music across the world, for more excitement. 

Voices of Iraq

In order to create what they allegedly sought an unbiased portrait of Iraq and its people the producers of this documentary distributed 150 video cameras to ordinary Iranian citizens and asked them to document their lives then pass the cameras on. What emerges is a chaotic tapestry reflecting a diverse people struggling under the weight of too much war and a succession of horrendous governments. Yet most of the messages are upbeat, perhaps too upbeat. According to some critics, the project was devised to show the Bush war in the best possible light. The vast majority of the witnesses who escaped the cutting room floor seem to have a very pro-American bias and much of the content is highly apolitical. Of the 450 hours of film the editors dealt with, only 85 minutes made it into the final film. It would be interesting to know how typical the final footage is, as well as to know with what criteriaand motives the cameras were distributed.

Volcano (1997)

This is a cut above most disaster flicks with its breathless pacing, good special effects and a cast of characters headed up by Tommy Lee Jones that is composed of more than mere stick figures. A couple of earthquakes rock the Los Angeles area; they are harbingers of an even more serious problem: a great festering volcano growing below the La Brea Tar Pits.  The film does a good job in its early going of portraying the hectic, paranoiac cityscape that is the modern L.A. When the shit hits the fan, there is a sense that holy retribution is afoot in a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

DVDs To Your Doorstep!

Director Robert Altman lovingly crafted this examination of the intense
relationship between Vincent van Gogh and his long-suffering brother Theo
who for many years supported his crazed genius of a sibling. Beautifully
shot and designed, this has no resemblance to the 1956 Hollywood biopic
"Lust for Life" which dealt with the same material by using the cookie
cutter tormented-artist routine. Tim Roth as the artist and Paul Rhys as
Theo are both outstanding. Especially memorable is the scene in a field of
wheat when van Gogh shoots himself. He is seen as a distant figure that
perhaps could be a scarecrow in one of the master's own paintings.

The Vanishing (1988)

Another kidnapping story-this one from Holland. A man becomes obsessed with
the disappearance of his girlfriend from a roadside rest stop in France.
This is an absorbing psychodrama that never lets up and shouldn't be
confused with the more recent American remake with Jeff Bridges that is a
pallid imitation of the original.
 

The Verdict (1982)

A rummy lawyer played convincingly by Paul Newman has hit the skids when a
medical malpractice case that is handed off to him offers the promise of a
career revival and restoration of his ideals and self confidence. The
perceptive screenplay by David Mamet is intelligently brought to the screen
by Sidney Lumet.
 
 

Voyager

Sam Shepard plays a world weary civil engineer who roams the globe seeking
some point to his existence. Following a plane crash he encounters a man
who is strangely linked to his past then meets a German woman (Julie Delpy)
with whom he goes to live in Athens. Very interior and cerebral in
construction, it will appeal to those who find the writings of Thomas Mann
and Herman Hesse rewarding.
 
 
 

Vernon, Florida