Film: While We'are Young, Directed by Noah Baumbach (2014)

Another good movie by Noah Baumbach! It's all about "the old" vs "the young" in art. In Baumbach's story - it's film making.
The young can pitch you anything and you will love them for that. You are old and uncertain and self-doubting and you can't complete things. The young make things with ease. They record stuff and pass it on as "documentaries"...They are shameless, cool, and master the game of appearing authentic. They steal from anybody and everybody and make it their own. They can justify their lack of artistic integrity with irresistible charm. The young can use "fuck you" playfully but -- fuck you "young" - for real...It's all going to pass...Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame while it lasts.

Highly enjoyable - if you are in the "industry" or if you are "old"!

Film: Ex Machina, Directed by Alex Garland

Went to see the film because it was generating some buzz. It started out as a limited release and then it was suddenly showing in a lot more theaters. 

I watched it with patience that it did not deserve. As the film progressed, my patience started to transform into curiosity as to how this is going to work out and finally it turned into disappointment. First of all - a lot of ideas were thrown out and never developed (from semantics to automated neuropschylogical testing). A lot of name-dropping occurred as well -- from Wittgenstein to Jackson Pollock -- without actually deriving any meaning from that. Name-dropping was a fancy backdrop and did not create a CONTEXT for the action. Some of the issues discussed were so tired and tiresome: e.g. global loss of privacy , the internet as Big Brother, behavioral patterns as source of the new enslavement of the individual by the big technology corporations. The display of the 'enslaved', 'closeted' robots (all women), interchangeable, and disposable - was the lowest point of the film. This part belonged to "dungeon" movies aesthetics, if there is such a genre.

Isn't it sad that the underlying message of the film eventually turned out to be that the robot "becomes" human when it learns to lie, back-stab, and be manipulative? This is the test for humanness? Please...If the movie sends a cynical message that does not mean that it is very intelligent or intellectual... The final shot was quite ridiculous - the robot's (now human) dream to stand on a cross-section and observe what happens IS accomplished!? I thought the director would at least send her to manage The Big Software Corporation ...

Oscar Isaac is unrecognizable in the role of Nathan and as good as ever. Hope he gets the role he deserves in the future.

Film: American Hustle. Directed by David O'Russel

"The Fighter" is David O'Russell's best film so far. He has been trying hard to emulate his past success but in  vain."Silver Linings Playbook" was a sugar coated interpretation of a not so bad debut novel by Matthew Quick. The book had more dramatic potential than the film could make use of. It threw out the drama and stayed on the level of  kitschy romance drama cliches.

"American Hustle" is another disappointment. It is not an important film, it is just another (among many) genre picture. It does not rise above the level of a con-scheme film and there are far better con films than this one. And no matter how big and powerful its PR campaign is and how many awards the film will win -- this is not going to change. 

The story is contrived and the characters are contrived - hence the stress on physical disguise - the actors have nothing to play, at least they have to look different... Their performance is hinged on physical things - they are trying hard to impersonate some psychological types or to mask the lack of drama or psychological motivation using superficial trickery. They are trying to conjure up the psychological via the mechanical. In the case of Ms Lawrence it works -she is playing the trashy nagging wife cliche after all. Amy Adams' character presence on the screen most of the time is dramatically and logically not justified. Her character's relationship to the over-zealous FBI agent is illogical to the point of puzzling and mired in tasteless erotics. 

The film's anti-corruption political pathos is so tired and unoriginal. 

There are films like that - all the components of good film-making are there but the aftertaste of having watched something futile and phony remains. 

The hype about "American Hustle" -- inexplicable!

By the way, "The Fighter" was not co-written by D. O'Russell while for both "Silver Linings" and "American Hustle" - he co-wrote the screenplay. May be he should stop doing that.

Film: Frances Ha, Directed by Noah Baumbach, Producer: Scott Rudin

Of course, I would never expect a bad film from producer Scott Rudin...

And "Frances Ha" is a nice film. A black-and-white independent, a Nouvelle Vague impersonator, it is a small, cheerful but also sad movie, which does not deserve to be called "charming" as it would be an offensive epithet for this kind of an honest unassuming film. It is a movie about love but without the sex part -- which makes it really original. Frances never quite adapts, she is not too smart or too talented but too good, naive, silly, delusional, inept, spirited, "undate-able," and unselfish to be able to shape her life into something standard. Sophie is her opposite. Frances loves Sophie and this love is not shared, nor is it consummable. Frances just loves this other person but would never be able to share a life with her -- a realization she has to accept as a blessing as she looks across the room at the end of the film to meet Sophie's gaze -- gratefully and gracefully. Don't interpret this as "friendship should be enough", "be grateful for what you can have"... It is rather - well, there are people like this, like Frances Ha (the last name is nonchalantly cut off), they will never settle down as "normal" people do, don't pity them, envy them...

On the other hand, the film seems to be a little scatterbrain like its heroine...It is a life-style movie, the style of life as a mess.

Film: Blue Jasmine

"Blue Jasmine" is probably the best film Woody Allen has done in recent years. It is a drama with satirical 

overtones dialoguing  with the American drama classics (T. Williams' Streetcar Named Desire in particular) to reflect on the sorry state of contemporary morals. It is a better and more laconic insight into the American culture of "irrational exuberance" than "The Wolf of Wall Street" with its typical Woody Allen morality-play rigid schema transpiring through the lightness of what is happening on the screen. And what is happening is quite comical - on the surface at least. It is the stuff comedies are made off: a rich woman has lost everything and is in a "fish out of water" situation having to share a working-class life-style with her sister Ginger (S. Hawkins). We begin to grasp the tragic side of the story when it becomes obvious that Jasmine (born Jeannette) wants to dig herself out of the hole and climb-back to her previous position by lying and nurturing delusions about herself and her prospects. Eventually, she has to sever herself from reality (read "poverty"). If she can't accept being poor, her only option left is insanity. Her parallel with Blanche ends here: [she] can't accept realism, [she] wants magic!" The "magic" that made her rich in the first place...Her parallel with real-life characters - e.g. the female protagonist of the documentary "The Princess of Versailles" (the wife of a real estate magnate gone broke who eats from a 2,000 dollar caviar box with a large spoon sitting alone on her messy bed) starts here.  Reality offers a lot of proof that people, who are compelled to be or act rich develop a behavior which borders on the insane - check all the "real housewives", Kardashian reality TV or any other reality life-style shows. The life-style media has been driving all kinds of white-trash personas crazy. Those who accept to be "loosers" - like Ginger does - get to keep their sanity and keep stocking the supermarket aisles. Ginger also aspired to "break rich" but lost a handful -- a lottery win (not without meaning in this context). She also aspired to climb socially by falling for a professional man but got duped on this front as well. Jasmine was "lucky" briefly through her marriage to a crook. Both sisters come from the working class. Blanche and Stella in T. Williams' play were descendants of the Southern aristocracy - their problem was to accept the downfall of their class. In Allen's drama, it is the working class who are driven crazy because they can't jump the gap, can't jump the great divide between rich and poor, which is growing wider and wider. And the wider this divide grows, the louder its allure is being blasted through all communication channels into the fragile psyche of those who "dream big."  These are the choices - accept the loss and be content (there is love and sex for you as a consolation) or take Xanax and eventually - there is madness.

To comment on David Denby's crucial question whether the best films of 2013 are also "important": "Blue Jasmine" IS "important" as opposed to "American Hustle," for example, which is NOT. W. Allen put his finger on the pulse of our time. Not frustrated sexuality or fall from aristocratic grace (Blanche's tragedy) are our problems anymore but another type of Desire -- materialistic and beauphoric, premised on instant gratification with a No Exist sign blinking at the end.

Kate Blanchett's performance is superb. The mannerisms of her character mask a deep void that is scary and only occasionally lurks in her eyes and the low tones of her husky voice.