Lars von Trier continues to do things his way with ‘Melancholia’, but he also continues to have quality cinema evade his grasp. When he announced that he was making a science fiction/end of the world type film next, I was foolish enough to believe that he might be trying his hand at a less obtuse flick. How wrong I was. This is von Trier again making a feature length therapy session masked as a movie. While it’s nowhere near the graphic horror of ‘Antichrist’, it shares with that film an inability to keep you from boredom during the majority of the running length. It’s a shame really, since Kirsten Dunst is outstanding here, but when the narrative shifts away from her in the second half, you’re left with little to like. There’s a really interesting version of this story to be made, but von Trier almost intentionally seems to have gone in the other direction. Fans of his work will likely enjoy him working at a lower decibel than usual, but other than that, I don’t really get what all the fuss is about. Chalk it up as another disappointing Oscar hopeful this year, after ‘The Tree of Life’ and ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. I won’t deny the ambition of the work, but I will quibble with its effectiveness, since it’s rather lacking in that field.
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2011 releases,
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Not that anyone is surprised, but the MPAA officially handed down their rating for Steve McQueen’s controversial new film Shame, and ladies and gents…it’s not an R rating. I don’t think this is as big a hurt to the flick as it might be to others, but we shall see. Here’s the story from The Hollywood Reporter on the announcement:
