Bandini Blog

Jim Jarmusch has never been a filmmaker in a hurry. His films that work — from Night on Earthto Broken Flowers – have a droll, meditative vibe and pace. He often pieces together an episodic story that allows movie stars to show up in tiny, single-scene roles — star power for his quirky, self-conscious riffs.

But the shortcomings of his style work against his sleep-inducing riddle, The Limits of Control. A repetitive koan about “He who thinks he’s bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery,” this is indulgent filmmaking at its most pretentious.

A mysterious man (Isaach De Bankole) in a shark-skin suit is given a mission. Go to Spain. Meet a succession of people, exchange code-words and coded messages left inside matchboxes, all leading to, well, what?

“Reality is arbitrary,” he is told. Boredom, we see, isn

Our mysterious stranger silently walks the streets of Madrid, Seville and Almeria. He meets with assorted oddballs — the white-haired actress ( Tilda Swinton), the aged art lover (John Hurt), “the Mexican ( Gael Garcia Bernal).”

They all ask, “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?” They all say “You wouldn’t by any chance be interested in” music-art-film-science-hallucinations. He doesn’t answer. He has two espressos, one of which he sips as he swallows coded messages.

No performer makes more than a momentary impression; no interminable scene lingers on the memory as long as it lasts on the screen.

“The best films are the dreams you’re not sure you’ve really had,” the actress says, suggesting that maybe we aren’t sitting through this — we’re dreaming it all. “Sometimes, I like to see films where people just sit there not saying anything.”

You go right ahead and watch those films. But make them at your own peril. Demanding patience from your viewers is one thing. Not giving us a payoff for an exasperating two hours of walking down scenic sidestreets and viewing paintings at the Reina Sofia that seem to have inspired this “script,” is infuriating. Testing the limits of fans’ patience with Limits of Control is no reward at all.

source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com

It would stretch the talents of Seinfeld, Tina Fey and Good News Week all working together to create a comedy out of the story of American capitalism and how the cowboys running the show galloped off with $700 billion just last year. Paul Thomas Anderson had a bash and came up with the grimly salutary There Will Be Blood but, love him or be irritated by him, maverick documentary-maker Michael Moore has the genius to cut together a cohesive if wildly imaginative grab-bag of facts from ancient Rome to Bernie Madoff that makes sense — show me an economist or politician who can do that in less than two hours!

Moore is always visually playful and subversive, and even when dealing with such serious and depressing topics entertaining; but he’s also game enough to examine America’s mythology of prosperity: anyone-can-make-it-and-you’re-a-loser-if-you-don’t (which must be why they are all pigging out on comfort food), framing the discussion in a historical context interwoven with the contemporary woes of ordinary people labouring under the inequities of the system.

He plants a major stake in the heart of big banks, in particular Goldman Sachs and its influence on the American political system, right to the (former) president’s desk, and gives us a conspiracy theory which the far right and the left can enjoy. For the moment Obama gets a reprieve.