No (2012)

Real life accounts on the creation of an ad campaign used to oust Augusto Pinochet from Chilean power in 1988. This was up for a best foriegn language Oscar, but lost to that dreadful Amour movie. No is countless times more enjoyable than Amour, but that says very little. A couple major issues cause me to tell you no on No.

At it’s heart it is a fantastic true life tale of an underdog. Great story and some interesting characters. This is somewhat lost with the technical choices employed. A U-matic video camera was used throughout as was a 4:3 aspect ratio.  At the risk of boring those less technicaly inclined I’ll stop there, but say that it looked and felt like a cheap video commercial from the 80s. This was obvioulsy an attempt to help transport the viewer back to that era and might have worked in a short. Not fun to look at for 30 seconds of ad time let alone 118 minutes. Another issue I had was with the ideology of René Saavedra played by the always likable Gael García Bernal. René was at the head of the No campaign and his dumbed down, lowest common denominator methods were made up of the things that make me crazy about Hollywood.

Long story short, interesting, but the story is much more fruitful than the video it was shot on.

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Small Apartments (2012)

This criminally overlooked small dark indie comedy is indeed quirky, but not in a bad way. Quirk has been running rampant in recent years thanks to the success of Wes Anderson, David Lynch and more importantly the Coen brothers. All too often this quirk is used to mask an otherwise drab story or a set of weak characters or even a weak director. Small Apartments is not that kind of quirk. You get the feeling that Swedish born director Jonas Åkerlund (Spun and countless music videos) has nothing but genuine intentions in his use of this new four letter word. Each scene incorporates a bevy of cut aways which gives the viewer a sense of the  intricate set design and surroundings. “Lots of topography” as Peter Stormare put it so eloquently in the dvd featurette. “So many paint by number movies that don’t use this technique come out flat like a pizza.” I’m paraphrasing here, but it was another great point that the actor made. The characters are abundant and the  the  cast is enormous, but all are entertaining. (more…)