Tarsem is known for his visuals, and indeed it was the trailer for The Fall that convinced to go see it on the big screen, despite my dislike of his first and only other film, The Cell, which was all style over substance. But I had read that The Fall was a labor of love that Tarsem had been working on for over a decade, and that the images were in service of a greater story. This is both true and untrue.

It's true in the sense that it is a very intelligent film that happens to have beautiful visuals. It's untrue in the sense that much of the time the beautiful visuals are clearly arbitrary, based on beautiful locations Tarsem happened upon while shooting commercials all over the world. But The Fall is meant to be a fictional story, not a sequel to Baraka (which is already in production anyway), and so I must evaluate it on those terms. And in that regard, The Fall is a qualified success as well, except for some pacing and structural problems that sometimes made me an impatient viewer.

Set in the 1930's, the story is sort of a mix of The Wizard of Oz and Pan's Labryinth, about a young immigrant girl (Catinca Untaru) convalescing in a Southern California hospital. She befriends a stuntman (Lee Pace) who was paralyzed in an on-set accident, and who begins to tell her a fantastical story about five heroes who band together to fight their mutual enemy, Governor Odious.

For reasons that are somewhat essential to the plot, the story is disorganized and capricious (e.g., Charles Darwin teaming up with a stereotyped Italian explosives expert and an ex-slave), which while consistent with the overall theme, leads to those pacing problems I mentioned above. The focus of the film is partly on how an intelligent young child with a limited grasp of English interpret stories in her mind, incorporating real elements in her life, and often misinterpreting basic elements (like imagining an Indian who lost his wigwam and "squaw" as the turbaned type from a land of grand palaces). And it's partly about how the story is able to affect and sometimes manipulate the little girl, to whom who lives and dies in the story actually matters.

The premise of the film is responsible both for its good and not-so-good qualities, yet in the week or so since I saw the film, the not-so-good qualities have declined in importance and my opinion of the film has improved.

One last thing I enjoyed: The Fall is tangentially about early Hollywood filmmaking, and Tarsem includes two great montages in the film, one about limb amputations, and the other about falling stuntmen. I hereby nominate Tarsem to be the montage editor of the next Academy Awards ceremony.

Brief comments on two movies I saw last weekend:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- I had fun watching this, especially at the beginning, relieved that unlike the Star Wars prequels the fourth in the Indiana Jones series did not betray the spirit of its predecessors. Still, it was the weakest link in the series' history, saddled by an aimless script, a humdrum second act, and the presence of Spielbergian aliens -- a sad departure from the reliance on religious artifacts of the earlier films.

Redbelt -- I'm generally a Mamet fan, but I liked this film even more than I expected. Despite a few false notes and a dependence on an overly-serpentine twist even for Mamet, Chiwetel Ejiofor's excellent lead performance more than compensated for any flaws. It's a rare fighting movie (in this case, Brazilian jiu jitsu, though Redbelt isn't a fighting movie in the traditional sense) that actually earns its climactic ending.

Darn kottke had to go ahead and post a list of the "1001 Movies That You Must See Before You Die" (plus an addendum). Like the book list, the selections are highly debatable, particularly in the past couple decades. (e.g., The Constant Gardener?)

I've seen 302 of the movies, so I'm batting 30%, three times better than with the book list. Same drill: the full list of movies I've seen on the list is after the jump, with asterisks next to my favorites.

I didn't expect this from the trailer, but Iron Man turned out to be the best superhero movie I've seen since Batman Begins. Beside it just being a well-made action movie with Robert Downey, Jr., I appreciated not knowing anything about the character before entering the theater. I also realized during the film that I prefer superhero movies which don't rely on "magical powers," like Superman, the X-men, and Spiderman all do. I recognize that those films attempt to make scientific explanations, but it's much easier for me to get invested in a character like Batman or Iron Man who underneath the costume is just a regular human. Sure, both Batman and Iron Man have unrealistic strength and engineering abilities, but it crosses the movie-plausibility threshold for me.

See my posts on The Illusionist vs. The Prestige for a similar distinction.

A brief recommendation. This weekend, I saw Jacques Tati's Play Time for the first time. (Alas, not on the big screen in 70mm, but the Criterion DVD.) Despite being a two-hour movie without a traditional plot and with Altmanesque dialog mixed into the background noise, I was continually entertained by its endless inventiveness, stark cinematography, carefully choreographed structure, and its humor, both slapstick and subtle. Not having seen any Tati before, my reference points for the film would be Michel Gondry and Terry Gilliam mixed with The Sims. The whole film is like a socially critical Rube Goldberg device designed to beautifully break down.

It also reminded me of the existence of 70mm film in general, which I haven't thought of in awhile due to my living in 70mm-free Nevada and to its replacement in mainstream theaters by IMAX. Let alone that no major film has been shot fully in 70mm since 1996 (Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, and it was actually 65mm). But I remember fondly seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia -- in Hartford and Boston, respectively -- in all of their 70mm glory. I hope I get the chance to catch Play Time projected in 70mm, as its wide shots filled with multitudes of people demand detailed viewing.