What I Watched, What You Watched #162

I enjoyed another solid week of movie watching, though it got cut a little short on Saturday as I fell a little ill in the afternoon, either from something I ate or… I don’t really know what actually, but no matter. The night before I was able to finally see the much talked about Richard Gere corporate thriller Arbitrage, which has people talking a lot about Gere for a potential Oscar nomination as well as boasting about Nate Parker as an up-and-coming actor. Both conversations are definitely worth having.

For Parker, he doesn’t really get enough time on screen to make much of a ruckus on the Supporting Actor front, but there is a great little “Do you believe him?” angle to the story that I really liked. And with Gere, the opening of the film does a fantastic job of making the “Silver Fox” look more vulnerable than I ever believe I’ve seen him… “Small” is probably the word I would use.

Gere, even in roles where he’s made to look like a fool or being taken advantage of, always comes across strong to me and sometimes I think it has worked to his disadvantage. Sort of like, “Eh, I’m not too sure I believe this is the type of guy to get taken advantage of like that.” Here, the film opens and, for lack of a better description, Gere looks old, or older at least and he sets up a level of vulnerability from the start, even though throughout most of the film he never looks quite as sympathetic.

I am hoping to tap out a full review in the next couple of days so I don’t want to waste much more space on it here other than to say I think it’s a film worth a look. I’m not entirely confident Gere can score a nomination, but if Lionsgate and Roadside do a little work and he gets some early season kudos you never know what could happen.

Otherwise, I also watched Criterion’s 2011 release [amazon asin=”B005152CC8″ text=”The Complete Jean Vigo”], which includes A propos de Nice, Taris, Zero de Conduite and L’Atalante. I addressed A propos de Nice in my article earlier this week headlined “Movies and the Search for Deeper Meaning: Is there Such a Thing as Looking too Close?” which many of you took part in a fun conversation.

Vigo, having directed, really, only three films before dying at the age of 29 — Taris really comes across more as a short promotional film — Zero de Conduite and L’Atalante are his two narrative features with A propos de Nice serving as a piece of social cinema that comes across way more experimental and something that would give allusions to what we could expect from Vigo and look for in his works more than anything else.

Between Zero de Conduit and L’Atalante, Zero de Conduite (which I’ve included in full on the bottom of this post) is hands down my favorite and a film that shows an obvious influence on Francois Truffaut‘s Amarcord, but that might be stretching it a bit since so much of Fellini’s films were taken directly from his life, but even in that sense Zero de Conduit, Au revoir les enfants, Amarcord and The 400 Blows all hold a close relation as all are examples of the filmmaker’s tapping into their youth for inspiration for their stories.

I have not yet had a chance to explore all the extras, but as I wrote in my “Movies and the Search for Deeper Meaning: Is there Such a Thing as Looking too Close?” piece, I recommend reading Vigo’s lecture “Towards a Social Cinema“. It is a bit more of a specific conversation on one subject, but I think many of the lines can, very easily, be applied to cinema on a whole.

And with that, I open the door to you. What did you watch this week? Are you preparing for the RopeofSilicon Movie Club? Picnic at Hanging Rock is the first title we’ll be discussing on October 15 and regular reader Marlon Wallace points out that along with the links I provide on the Movie Club homepage, the film is available on demand to Showtime subscribers for free. Hopefully all of you get a chance to check it out.