Mike Mills
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Stylistically, the film occasionally nods to Godfrey Reggio’s famed time-lapse documentary Koyaanisqatsi, which the film also name-checks, sometimes speeding up or slowing down the frame, suggesting the mutability of time.
He even imposes an occasional switch into Koyaanisqatsi mode to give the illusion of smeary LSD trails.
Lo and behold, then, that a closed-off home located in a very particular place at a very specific cultural moment — which Mills, time and again, will make the point of emphasizing through his Beginners-esque montages, too-on-the-nose Koyaanisqatsi clip and all — fosters particular ways of thinking and being.
Since Godfrey Reggio's time-lapse-intensive Koyaanisqatsi is another cultural artifact sampled by Mills, the post-production effect also manages to suggest punk as a logical extension of late postwar capitalism.
Writer/director Mike Mills—whose previous family drama Beginners (2010) was a lovable portrait of the relationship between a son and his elderly, newly declared gay dad—makes unusual use of fast-motion photography in many sequences, a choice perhaps inspired by the frenzied time-lapse of the 1982 modernist documentary Koyaanisqatsi (a movie explicitly referenced at one moment).
Bening and Gerwig are dynamite, their co-stars exceptional, and a late-game visual quote of Godfrey Reggio’s incredible 1982 documentary “ Koyaanisqatsi ” proves serendipitous in its synchronicity.
Alternatively, given the filmmaker's background in music videos and conceptual art projects (the film also showcases Mills' painting), this mellow remembrance of things past can be enjoyed as a music video for " Stardust Memories ," crooned by the inimitable Hoagy Carmichael during a flashback.
Mills also outfits Plummer in a series of supposedly "elegant" old-queen, Ascot-accessorized ensembles, like Zachary Scott in Mildred Pierce, which have a slightly risible retro look to them.
’50s-era photographs of happy families, or crying babies, or people enjoying soft drinks — that’s like a pop-art version of what Chris Marker does in La Jetée (among the greatest, most mournfully joyous movies about loss and memory ever made).
Sometimes it feels like a sentimental journey, à la American Graffiti, but Mills periodically uses distancing devices to make us question our own nostalgia.
And being that Abbie has been infatuated with “The Man Who Fell to Earth” since her teens, there’s also a welcome spot of David Bowie.
Abbie dyes her hair red after seeing Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which Bowie plays an alien facing an existential crisis after crash-landing on our planet.
The two other women in Jamie’s life are the lodger Abbie (Greta Gerwig), an artist and punk enthusiast who bases her appearance on that of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, and Julie (Elle Fanning), the sylph-like but subversive teenager on whom he has a mad crush.
Así, mediante una estética polaroid y una distorsión psicodélica y selectiva de la imagen, nos introducimos en un viaje iconoclasta a través de la irrupción demoledora del punk en la cultura norteamericana, donde los acordes de Blondie o The Ramones propiciaban un incontrolable miedo en las viejas generaciones, al tiempo que el androgismo del glam rock y la hiperbólica teatralidad y dramatismo de Bowie o Alice Cooper hechizaban a las nuevas y las contagiaban de su histeria paranoide, como a la propia Abbie quien, influida por la fuerte impresión que le causó Thomas Jerome Newton, el personaje interpretado por David Bowie en El hombre que cayó a la tierra (The Man Who Fell To Earth, 1976), se tiño el pelo de rojo.
Plus, he’s unconvincing as a gay man, in that familiar, self-congratulatory, straining to appear fair-minded and unprejudiced way reminiscent of those unbelievable paragons Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia.
No filmmaker has managed to reproduce the balance of self-indulgent neurosis and self-deprecatory irony that elevates Annie Hall and Manhattan into the pantheon of the greatest romantic comedies, not even Woody Allen.
Mills keeps things percolating—shades of Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall”—by constantly jumping around chronologically.
By turns, “Beginners” suggests a new age “Jules and Jim” and a rejiggered “Annie Hall.”
A jazz-bluesy score — Hoagy Car- michael, Jelly Roll Morton — gives Anna and Oliver's courtship a hint of Woody Allen circa "Manhattan" and "Annie Hall."
As with Annie Hall and (500) Days of Summer, we know from the top that certain relationships are terminal (Hal has cancer).
It stands bravely alongside Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy as one of the few American films that dares to ask what it is that drives society in the direction of self-medication rather than simply pointing out the collective monkey on our back.
La falta de protección en una de esas relaciones aleatorias lleva al espectador a acordarse de la película Kids (1995), pero entonces recordamos que el presente fílmico nos sitúa en 1979, todavía dentro de la zona de seguridad sexual que comenzaría a estrecharse a partir de 1981 con la devastadora era del sida.
No filmmaker has managed to reproduce the balance of self-indulgent neurosis and self-deprecatory irony that elevates Annie Hall and Manhattan into the pantheon of the greatest romantic comedies, not even Woody Allen.
A jazz-bluesy score — Hoagy Car- michael, Jelly Roll Morton — gives Anna and Oliver's courtship a hint of Woody Allen circa "Manhattan" and "Annie Hall."
By turns, “Beginners” suggests a new age “Jules and Jim” and a rejiggered “Annie Hall.”
Dying old Dad is cute, too, hosting a party for his new gay friends where they all watch The Times of Harvey Milk .
As a general rule I am not opposed to talking-canine scenarios; for instance, the title pet of the cult picture A Boy and His Dog makes a strong argument for the idea.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
influenced 20th Century Women (2016)
Echoing Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Julie says she isn’t here to be anyone’s concept.
From there, things improve immeasurably: McGregor and Laurent have a wonderful rapport (their on-again, off-again relationship suggests Punch-Drunk Love minus the Adam Sandler psychosis).
The results are an incredibly creative film that allows Mills to explore all of his artistic sides to create a film that has similar qualities as Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep," one of that auteur's more personal films.
While it may not be as straightforward or flow as organically as The Grand Budapest Hotel (my cup of tea), there’s so much creative magnetism within that it’ll knock your socks off.
Shot by cinematographer Robbie Ryan ( The Favourite , American Honey ), black & white gives the film an obvious “cinematic fairytale” look that is more intentional than simply for aesthetic purposes.
Shot in black in white by Robbie Ryan (“American Honey,” “The Favourite”), initially a curious choice, given Mills’ splendorous use of color in the past, this classic choice eventually reveals itself to illuminate the movie’s evocative ideas of memory: how we live in the past, worry about the future and are always trying to stay present in the moment.
McGregor, who is perhaps best known for "Trainspotting" and the "Star Wars" prequels, turns in a thoroughly enchanting performance that subtly traces Oliver's journey from doubt to desire.