Living Inside the Movies

Remembering Sydney Pollack

2008-05-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Of course I'm not the first person to point this out, but with most movies these days being either high-budget blockbusters or low-budget indies, films of mid-range budget have been squeezed out. These are films that, to their supporters, tackle serious issues, are well-crafted, and contain terrific acting, while to their detractors, fudge those very issues they bring up, use craft to cloud any real passion, and contain Oscar bait acting. Whatever your view, and there's merit from either point of view, there's no denying Sydney Pollack, who died yesterday at 73, was one of the directors most associated with so-called middlebrow films.
Born in Indiana, Pollack moved to New York in his teens. Like Sydney Lumet, another "middlebrow" filmmaker who started in television, Pollack originally started out as an actor, and even studied under famed Method teacher Sanford Meisner. Though he appeared on stage in such plays as "A Stone for Danny Fisher" (with Zero Mostel) and "The Dark is Light Enough" (with Katherine Cornell), and later also acted in TV on such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he later decided he'd rather teach acting than do it, and indeed taught at Meisner's workshop (he even married one of his former students, Claire Griswold, in 1958, and they remained married until his death). While in television, he became an assistant director for John Frankenheimer, and Frankenheimer hired him to be a dialogue coach for his film directing debut, The Young Savages. Burt Lancaster, the star of that film, suggested Pollack should direct (recommending him to agent Lew Wasserman), and after directing some TV, Pollack directed his first feature in 1965, called The Slender Thread. A film about a man (Sidney Poitier) trying to talk a woman (Ann Bancroft) out of committing suicide, it was poorly received, and Pollack later dismissed it, but it was the first time he teamed up with writer David Rayfiel (they had already worked together on television) in movies, and Rayfiel went on to be his go-to writer on 10 other movies. His other major professional relationship began in his following movie, This Property is Condemned, when he directed Robert Redford for the first time (Pollack had acted with him earlier in War Hunt). Together, Pollack and Redford went on to make six more movies together.
It wasn't until his fifth movie, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, that Pollack finally broke through. Based on the acclaimed Depression-era novel by Horace McCoy, it tells the tale of several people who, to earn money, enter a marathon dance contest. Darker than Pollack's films were later known for, it was a claustrophobic experience (Pollack and writers James Poe and Robert E. Thompson changed the novel so that the contestants weren't allowed to leave the dance area except for breaks), and except for one role (lead Michael Sarazin was rather colorless), showed Pollack's greatest gift as director - his work with actors. Both Jane Fonda and Gig Young were known up to that point for fluffier fare, but each broke out of typecasting with this film. Fonda earned her first Oscar nomination, while Young won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Although Pollack worked as a mainstream filmmaker for the rest of his career, he couldn’t be pigeonholed that easily. He moved through thrillers (Three Days of the Condor, The Firm), literary dramas (Out of Africa), topical dramas (Absence of Malice), romantic dramas (The Way we Were), existential dramas (The Yakuza), Westerns (Jeremiah Johnson), war movies (Castle Keep), and comedies (Tootsie). Although he modestly claimed he wasn’t a visual stylist, most of his films were shot in widescreen, which he felt allowed him to tell the story better (ironically, the first of his films that wasn’t was the pictorial Out of Africa). And even his weakest films (everything after The Firm, except for his documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry) contained well-crafted moments (even the muddled The Interpreter had the tense sequence on the bus and Catherine Keener’s reaction to a bomb being planted on a ceiling; “Well, that’s just rude”), and acting moments that made you take notice. Gene Hackman, who gave one of his best performances ever in The Firm, credited Pollack for knowing not just how to talk to him, but how to leave him alone, and every film shows his care with other actors (unless I disliked the actor anyway, like Sally Field in Absence of Malice). I’m thinking particularly of Robert Redford listening to his own essay being read aloud in The Way we Were, or Paul Newman attacking Field when her article causes tragedy to happen in Malice, or Hackman telling Jeanne Tripplehorn “Whatever they do, they did to me a long time ago” in The Firm. His two best films, The Yakuza and Tootsie, of course, are full of such moments. The former seems an unlikely choice to be directing Paul Schrader’s study in masculinity (with help from his brother Leonard, and a rewrite by Robert Towne), but he keeps things on an even keel, and draws one of Robert Mitchum’s best performances. The latter remains one of the funniest movies ever made, and although Pollack and star Dustin Hoffman clashed repeatedly throughout filming (on, among other things, tone; Hoffman wanted it more comic, Pollack more dramatic), it doesn’t show. Hoffman’s revealing his true identity near the end remains one of the comic high points of the last 25 years.
Redford, Pollack’s frequent star, was often said as an actor to care too much about his image to stray from playing it safe. Pollack seemed to like making movies with stars too much to stray from playing it safe, and even after he won Best Picture and Directing Oscars for Out of Africa, he seemed more stuck then ever (except for The Firm, which I still find entertaining). He seemed to save his risk-taking for producing and acting. For the former, he may have produced mainstream films similar to his own, like Presumed Innocent, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Quiet American, but he also helped young filmmakers like Steven Kloves (Flesh and Bone), Tom Tykwer (Heaven), and Kenneth Lonergan (the upcoming Margaret) to make the type of chance-taking films he normally didn’t make. For the latter, he was cajoled into appearing in Tootsie as Hoffman’s agent, he mostly played “suits,” and claimed he took acting jobs mainly so he could watch other directors he admired, like Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), Woody Allen (Husbands and Wives) and Robert Altman (The Player) work. Still, he always seemed relaxed and confident, and was almost always compelling on screen, particularly in one of his last performances as the oily law firm head in Michael Clayton. He could also be funny, as he demonstrated in his turns on Will & Grace as Will’s father. Pollack lived a quiet life when not making movies, raising his children, and staying out of trouble (he rarely drank and hadn’t smoked in over two decades). But while he may have lost his passion along the way for trying to make movies (he was distressed not only by the reaction to his later, lesser films, but also the fights he had with studios in trying to make them), he never lost his love for movies themselves (in 2001, he hosted “The Essentials” on TCM, where he showcased what he though were the essential American movies). And while he may not have been an “auteur,” and may not have been as script-conscious as he was given credit for (based on a conversation they had about adapting one of his novels, William Goldman once categorized Pollack as a “writer killer”), he nevertheless did leave his own stamp on American movies. He will be missed.

Prince Caspian doesn't have the right Narnia magic

2008-05-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Although the famous works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien seem at first very different, the two authors, who were friends most of their lives (albeit with some tension), actually had a lot in common. Both of their famous works - the Narnia books for Lewis, the Lord of the Rings books for Tolkien - came from stories the authors originally wrote for their children. Both authors, while they wrote in other genres, are most famous for their fantasy works. Both authors have used not only religious imagery in their works, but also Greek mythology and legends as an influence. Both of them have been accused of racism and sexism in their works. One signifigant difference is their view of movie adaptations of their works. While Tolkien, in principle, was open to a movie version of his novels (as long as Walt Disney had nothing to do with it), Lewis at the time thought no live-action movie could made from his novels and be good. Tolkien fanatics, on the whole, were satisfied with the movie versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and as a Narnia fanatic, I was quite pleased with the recent movie version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first movie of the series. The second movie of the Narnia books, Prince Caspian, is another matter, unfortunately.
As you may know from the trailer, it's been a year in Earth time since the Pevensie children - Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) - have been to Narnia, and they miss it. On their way to a train back to school, however, they immediately get sucked back into Narnia - specifically, the ruins of Cair Paravel, the castle where they once ruled as Kings and Queens. The castle is now in ruins because in Narnia time, it's been over a thousand years since they left, and Narnia has since been conquered by Telmarines, under the rule of Miraz (Sergio Castellito), a tyrant. Miraz has a nephew, Caspian (Ben Barnes), who has longed for the days of the old Narnians, thanks to the stories his professor, Doctor Cornelius (Vincent Grass), a half-man, half-dwarf, told him. When Miraz's wife gives birth to a son, Caspian is no longer considered an heir to the throne, and Miraz tries to have him killed, but Doctor Cornelius gets wind of the plot and arranges for Caspian to escape (this part actually opens the movie). Caspian escapes, and soon finds himself among a group calling themselves the old Narnians, among them Nikabrik (Warwick Davis), a Black Dwarf, Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage), a Red Dwarf, Trufflehunter (voiced by Ken Stott), a badger, and Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard), leader of a squadron of mice (the mice who chewed the ropes that bound Aslan in the previous movie, which led them to be talking mice). Together with the four children, they try to figure out a way to take back Narnia for the Narnians.
That's the general outline of the book as well, but there are some major revisions here from book to screen. Some of it is minor (Caspian and Susan are somewhat attracted to each other), but most of it is major and unfortunate. The biggest change is we don't get a flashback to see how Caspian learns about Narnia, first from his nurse (a character dropped for the movie) and then from Doctor Cornelius. Admittedly, this is probably done for reasons of time (the movie clocks in at 2:25, around the same time as the first book), but the problem is we don't get the sense of how Caspian feels towards the Narnians. It also takes away the mythic structure so essential to Lewis' work. More importantly, however, we also don't get a sense of the Narnians themselves in this movie. We certainly get a sense of how Miraz is a tyrant (Castellito, best known here as the chef in Mostly Martha, is properly evil in the role), but the Narnians are mostly dour. Nikabrik was like that in the book, but Trumpkin was a more boisterous soul, and while director/co-writer (with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who also co-wrote the first movie) Andrew Adamson probably wanted to avoid the easy caricature Trumpkin could have become, did he have to drain most of the humor out of the role? Surely Dinklage, who showed great comic timing in Find Me Guilty and Death at a Funeral, not to mention The Station Agent, could have played it that way. And in the title role, Barnes may look the part, and like everyone else who fights, holds his own on the battlefield, but is rather bland otherwise. The only Narnian who makes an impression is Reepicheep, thanks mostly to Izzard's stellar work (when Lucy remakrs how cute he looks, Reepicheep angrily looks for a fight, then when he sees who said it, apologizes profusely).
One could argue, of course, Adamson et al are trying to illustrate the characters through their actions, as opposed to Lewis, who illustrated them through dialogue, and the former is more cinematic. The problem is Adamson seems to think the only action in the movie should be Action with a capital A - battle scenes. Look, I loved the Lord of the Rings movies (each of them are on my respective top 10 lists for the years they were released), but every fantasy movie to come out since has treated them as the end-all and be-all of the genre, and that's not always appropriate. The long battle scene that closed the first movie also seemed like a younger version of the LOTR movies, but that was only part of the movie. This movie seems like one long battle or chase movie, and while it's well done in that respect, I found myself grateful for the few moments of not only humor, but of genuine movie magic. Lucy trying to wake the trees up is one of the few times the movie stops to breathe, and the sequence where Nikabrik, tired of promises Caspian has been unable to keep, tries to revive the White Witch (Tilda Swinton makes a splendid cameo), also has that magic. But most of the time, the movie's tone matches the gray look Adamson and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub (Black Book) give it, and that shouldn't necessarily be so.
As with the first one, the religious element of the film has been called into question. There's nothing specifically Christian here - although Lucy sees Aslan (voiced again by Liam Neeson) where no one else does, and thinks it's because she believes more, that's an element of most religions, not just Christianity. But again, the muted way the Narnians, and the humans, come off suggests something more Calvinistic than Catholic, which was Lewis' side. In the later book The Horse and his Boy, which takes place between the events of the first and second movies, one of the characters, who's never been to Narnia, witnesses the Narnians in a procession, and far from being stiffbacked and proper, they give off the air of someone who enjoys all aspects of life. The only aspect of life these characters seem to enjoy is the battle. The four returning characters come off better than everyone else, because of the goodwill they've built up from the first one, and they each have their moments - Moseley shows strength and vulnerability as the leader, Popplewell gets to be more of a warrior, Keynes gets to show off a bit of arguing skill, and Henley once again drinks in everything more deeply than the others. Another charge against the Narnia books is how they seem to want to preserve the innocence of childhood above all things. I don't think that's true - the characters are encouraged to never lose their childlike sense of wonder and imagination, but all of them have to go through a process of maturity, without losing that imagination (in the books, Susan is the only one who completely gives up her childlike ways). The movie of Prince Caspian certainly shows the characters struggling to mature, but it could have used a lot more of the imagination and wonder parts.

New DVD releases March 4

2008-03-05T22:58:00.000-08:00

Ever since Sean Penn burst onto the scene in 1982 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he’s cast himself as the outsider, not just as far as Hollywood is concerned, but in society as well. Certainly, that’s led him to interesting and powerful performances over the course of his career, while causing other critics – Tom Carson of GQ in particular – to say he’s lost his sense of joy and humor. I would dispute that, but I have to admit there’s a self-serving nature to not only his rebellious streak, but also the idea only males railing against society, or suffering a life crisis, are ideas good enough to tell stories about. What makes Into the Wild, his fourth outing as writer/director (not counting the short film he did for the September 11 anthology), his strongest film in those capacities is for the first time since his writing/directing debut, The Indian Runner, he’s combining that rebellious streak with a more nuanced version of the rest of the world.
In this film, the story is a true one. Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) seemed to have it all – born to well-off parents Walt (William Hurt) and Billie (Marcia Gay Harden), he became a top student and athlete (running cross-country), but also started to question and reject the middle-class values he was brought up with. After graduation, he gave away most of his money to Oxfam, and started on a journey around the country, with the idea that he’d wind up in Alaska and live off the land (he also started calling himself Alexander Supertramp). As documented in the book by Jon Krakauer, who was in full sympathy with McCandless’ spiritual and physical journey, McCandless may have intended to live a Thoreau-like life of solitude, but he also interacted with a great many people who enjoyed his company, such as Jan (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian Dierker), a hippie couple living in a trailer park, Ron (Hal Holbrook), a retiree who came to think of McCandless as an adopted grandson, and Wayne (Vince Vaughn), a farmer he once worked with (the film is narrated half the time by McCandless through his letters to Wayne – that he never sends – and half by his sister Carine (Jenna Malone). All of that ended when McCandless died in Alaska, and his body was found months later. Both Krakauer and Penn believe McCandless merely ate some poisoned berries and lacked the knowledge to counteract that, while others felt he died of the hubris of anyone who tries to be “one with nature.”
This, of course, begs the question – is it possible to like the film even if you think McCandless is full of shit? I myself was skeptical about McCandless, until I remembered how my brother sort of felt like he did, as did one of my former co-workers, about living life solely as you might have read about not only in books of naturalists like Thoreau and Jack London, but also of the great authors like Tolstoy. And I believe everyone except the most hard-bitten urbanites have fantasized about heading off by yourself into the great unknown – whether this is merely typical adolescent behavior or the uniquely American questing spirit is open to debate, but it’s there, I believe. Still, while Penn is definitely in sympathy with McCandless, he is mature enough to realize McCandless had set himself up with quite an existence even before he headed to Alaska. Every character McCandless encounters is treated sympathetically (even a ranger who forbids him to paddle down the river in a canoe is merely seen as doing his job), and the ones he becomes closest to – Jan, Rainey, Tracy (Kristen Stewart), the teen who lived near Jan and Rainey and who developed a crush on McCandless, Wayne, and especially Ron – all would have been happy if he had stayed in their lives. Even Walt and Billie are given more nuance as the film progresses – they start out being one-dimensional materialists, and we see their marriage is not the most ideal in the world, but as they search for their son, we see their genuine grief over his loss.
All of this wouldn’t matter without such a strong performance by Hirsch in the main role. There are always a number of lead male performances who are left empty-handed when Oscar nominations are announced simply because there is so much good work being done right now, and Hirsch, who had impressed me in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys but had done little impressive since, burrows himself completely into the character. It’s easy to see why people responded to McCandless because of the force of personality Hirsch brings to him; even if you don’t agree with his outlook, he’s warm and engaging, and responds well to the people who take him in. Everyone else in the cast is terrific as well, especially Keener and Holbrook, who brings his usual irascibility to make his role of the wise old man move past cliché. Also, Penn and cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries) capture the spirit of the outdoors that McCandless and like-minded people find so appealing (augmented by Eddie Vedder’s song score, which was unjustly ignored at Oscar time). You may not want to take the journey McCandless took, especially because of how it ended, but Into the Wild does make you reflect on the road not taken in your own life.
Is Marla Olmstead, the four-year-old painter whose work sold for several thousand dollars, a genuine child prodigy or a hoax, helped by her father? Should parents of a child prodigy push the child, or hold them back? Is so-called “modern” art real art, or is it just hypocrisy on parade? Can a documentary filmmaker, no matter how objective they claim to be, ever really capture the “truth”? Those are just a few of the questions posed by the fascinating documentary My Kid Could Paint That, and things become even more confusing when you find out the director, Amir Bar-Lev, felt he was getting too close to his subjects to find the real truth (in a sense, Olmstead’s parents Mark and Laura kept him around to give the world their side of the story).
It all started when young Marla picked up a paintbrush and followed the footsteps of her dad, Mark, an amateur painter with a soon-to-be-discovered talent for promotion and being a stage parent. So the story goes, Mark loaned the paintings to a coffeehouse run by a friend of his, and when customers liked them enough to want to buy them, Elizabeth Cohen, a local journalist, wrote a piece on her, Anthony Brunelli, a local gallery owner (the Olmsteads lived in Binghamton) did a show of her work, and a celebrity was born. Then 60 Minutes II did a segment on her, featuring Charlie Rose interviewing a child psychologist insisting Marla could not have painted those works by herself – and a hidden camera seemed to prove her point. Things weren’t helped when the Olmsteads decided to put out a DVD several months later, along with another exhibition of Marla’s work, that purported to prove once and for all Marla really was the genuine author of her works, and not her father. Nor was it helped by Brunelli, who at first seemed to be an enthusiastic booster of Marla, now acting as if he was in on the so-called scam all along just to pull the lid off the “scam” of modern art (an idea New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, who, along with Cohen, is the most fascinating interview in the film, discusses at length).Bar-Lev is too self-aware not to be troubled by the implications of his involvement in all this – he not only includes Kimmelman and Cohen warning him about being able to find the “truth” in all of this, but also a telling scene where Laura, who has always had qualms about Marla’s celebrity, breaks down and then mutters, “Documentary gold”. Still, I think sometimes Bar-Lev could have gone deeper into his subjects, especially into the idea of whether modern art itself is a scam (it’s not quite analogous, but avant-garde musicians and filmmakers also run into this kind of skepticism). In this sense, My Kid Could Paint That could serve as kind of a companion piece to the earlier documentary Who the F*#% is Jackson Pollock? – both films not only question the idea of modern art, but also who is qualified to judge them. Bar-Lev’s film is strongest when dealing with the family dynamics, and the way we treat children with “special talent.” As Cohen astutely points out (and as Laura despairs), no matter what happened, Marla would never really be an ordinary child again, and that’s something to mourn.
Sometimes in movies, there’s a scene crystallizing everything that makes the movie so good (or conversely, so bad). In Susanne Bier’s Things We Lost in the Fire, that scene comes about 2/3 of the way into the film. The story by Alan Loeb concerns two lost souls: Audrey (Halle Berry), a recent widow when her husband Brian (David Duchovny) is killed while he tries to break up a fight, and Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), Brian’s former friend, a drug addict struggling to stay clean. Against her better instincts (she never understood why Brian continued to help Jerry), she invites Jerry to stay with her and her children Harper (Alexis Llewellyn) and Dory (Micah Berry, who is no relation to Halle), partly because it’ll give Jerry a chance to get back on his feet, and partly because she needs help with Harper and Dory since she can hardly help herself. Jerry does take the children under his wing, and even helps Dory, who is afraid of swimming, because he doesn’t want to put his head under water. It’s after this moment, when Jerry helps Dory conquer his fear, that the scene between Audrey and Jerry occurs that made me take notice of the movie. Instead of being grateful, she lashes out at him – that should have been Brian teaching Dory to put his head underwater, and not Jerry, and he had no right to do that. And yes, Jerry’s struggling with his own demons, but he isn’t Dory’s father.
It’s scenes like that one that lift Things We Lost in the Fire above the soap opera that many critics accused it of being. Bier and Loeb may be treading familiar ground here, but they hit almost all the right notes in doing so. Jerry and Audrey don’t fall in love, and while they ultimately do find healing, the film is smart in how they get there. Admittedly, Brian’s character is too good to be true, and Duchovny doesn’t do much with his role to make him more interesting. But every other character is invested with reality, including Audrey’s neighbor Howard (John Carroll Lynch, far removed from his creepy suspect in Zodiac), trapped in an unhappy marriage and eager to help Jerry out, to Kelly (Alison Lohman), an addict who has feelings for Jerry. And Bier and cinematographer Tom Stern (Letters From Iwo Jima) don’t shoot this like a TV movie, but with a lyrical style that doesn’t impose feelings on the characters, but allows them to come to the surface on their own. As for the performances, it’s expected that Del Toro shines in playing another flawed character who nevertheless is a good person. Berry is the surprise here; she admittedly has made bad choices after winning her Oscar (Perfect Stranger), but she also falls under the trap of “if she’s that good-looking, she can’t act,” and I think she gets past that here. There are few obvious scenes of her dealing with her grief until the end, and those are earned. Mostly, she plays Aubrey as hesitant and lost, and does so in a quite subtle manner. As I mentioned before, Things We Lost in the Fire was unfairly dumped by critics and ignored by moviegoers who thought it would be too much of a downer. I hope it gets a better chance on DVD.
I don’t know why Sidney Lumet’s debut feature film, 12 Angry Men, is being released in a 50th anniversary edition, when the logical thing would have been to do so last year (that same problem was also illustrated with the anniversary editions of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Tootsie). Nevertheless, it’s always good to have this on DVD. Yes, it’s schematic, and yes, as Alan Dershowitz pointed out in an American Film article about 20 years ago, there’s no way a juror would have been able to bring a knife into the jury room. Still, this drama of one lone juror (Henry Fonda) trying to convince his fellow jurors to actually debate the evidence before they vote guilty against a defendant remains powerful, with great acting by Fonda, Lee J. Cobb (as Fonda’s most outspoken opponent), E.G. Marshall (as his most rational one), and the rest of the cast. Certainly better to do this one than the other major re-release this week, Mrs. Doubtfire. Chris Columbus’ movie may not have been the movie that started Robin Williams on the road to only doing shtick in his comedies (after all, Toys had been released the year before), but it certainly didn’t help the cause. And while the shtick is funny here, as when Williams pretends to be various people calling to interview for the nanny his ex-wife (Sally Field) wants to hire, the sentiment of the movie is pretty hard to take.

New DVD releases February 26, and a final word on the Oscars

2008-02-27T22:30:00.000-08:00

What with the Oscars (more on that later), I haven’t had time to see much of this week’s releases. I did see The Darjeeling Limited already, but the only other two I’ve seen are a British comedy directed by an American, and a British miniseries that’s being remade as a Hollywood movie.
There are a couple of reasons why a straight-out farce (as opposed to farcical comedy, which can be different) seems so old-fashioned right now. For one thing, it depends mostly on plot, where many of the most popular comedies these days depend on getting their laughs first, and can often have indifferent plots. Just as important, however, is while today’s comedies seemed determined to push the envelope and be proud of it, farces are still dependant on their being a vein of normalcy over the proceedings that characters at least pretend to take seriously. Finally, even when a farce works, today it doesn’t seem to resonate like it used to. Still, they can be agreeable if you’re in the right mood, and Frank Oz’s Death at a Funeral falls into this category.
Of course, a funeral is an ideal place to set a farce, since everyone is trying to keep up the decorum even more so than usual. Add the fact this takes place in Britain, where the stereotype of a stiff upper lip is a special requirement, and you’re in even more fertile territory. Oz and writer Dean Craig aren’t out to reinvent the wheel here, so this tale of struggling writer Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen) trying to keep the dignity of his father’s funeral intact despite some drug related shenanigans and family secrets that come out hits predictable, if amusing, notes. Some are not so amusing – as a lout trying to woo a woman he had a one-night stand with, Ewan Bremmer is one-note, as is Peter Vaughan as an old coot. And while the conflict between Daniel and his much more successful brother Robert (Rupert Graves) is well developed, the rest of the family dynamics aren’t drawn out so deftly. Still, MacFadyen plays it straight well, and Oz lets two performers shine without overwhelming the proceedings. Alan Tudyk, best known to many as Wash from Firefly and Serenity, plays the fiancée of Daniel’s sister, and his reaction to taking the wrong drug provides some of the best gags of the movie. And casting Peter Dinklage as the unknown gay lover of Daniel’s father may seem like a bit of stunt casting, but Dinklage makes it work. At the very least, Death at a Funeral marks a return to form for Oz after the misfire of his Stepford Wives remake.
Sometime next year, we’ll get to see a Hollywood version of the British miniseries State of Play, and judging by the original, that film’s got a lot to live up to. Written by Paul Abbott (Touching Evil), the six-part series follows an investigation into two deaths that seem unrelated at first – Sonia Baker, a research assistant for MP Stephen Collins (David Morrissey) who fell under a subway train, and Kelvin Stagg, a teen who was killed in what seems at first to be a drug-related hit. Pursuing the story is Cal McCaffrey (John Simm), a reporter for The Herald who used to be Collins’ campaign manager. McCaffrey of course is biased towards wanting to help Collins, but things start happening with the story, such as Collins having an affair with Baker, Baker’s death not being a suicide but a professional hit done by the same person who killed Stagg, and all of this possibly relating to Collins’ position in government. Abbott and director David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) keep the six hours moving quickly, yet allow time for character development and humor, particularly with Dominic (Marc Warren), whose relationship with Sonia hides a deeper secret, and Cal’s editor Cameron (Bill Nighy), who’s a British version of Ben Bradlee, or at least as portrayed in All the President’s Men (one could argue the series is in fact a British version of that movie). Nighy in particular is the best thing about the series. He underplays smoothly, and gives the impression of someone who supports his staff, gently but firmly pushes them to do good work (this isn’t a Fleet Street paper), and isn’t above using humor to make his point (when Cal approaches him for money for what turns out to be getting evidence tying Baker and Stagg together, Cameron grants it with the caveat, “If it’s for a prostitute, it’s coming out of your wages”).
Given that it’s a police investigation as well, I wish we had seen more of them, but all of the characters are drawn well, so that there’s no good or bad in any of them – even a government official who pressures Collins has his human side, as does an oil executive, while Cal ends up getting involved with Collins’ wife Anna (Polly Walker). I was hesitant about that storyline, even if I do like watching Polly Walker naked, because at first it seemed like a love story thrown in just to have a love story, but it ends up being just as complicated as everything else in the story, and ends in a satisfying way, just like everything else here. And while Nighy and Walker may be the big names here (along with Kelly Macdonald and James McAvoy as fellow reporters), Morrissey (best known here for his turn on PBS’ Bleak House) and Simm (Life on Mars) are both terrific as well. Make sure you set aside six hours to watch this.
Given the fact Sunday's Oscar show was the lowest-rated ever, there's more Monday-morning quarterbacking than ever before as to how to overhaul the show. Given the fact none of these tentpole shows do as well as they used to, except for a shrinking niche audience, I don't what major overhaul can be done to turn things around, but I do agree with Jeffrey Wells when he says Gil Cates needs to go, and the quicker the better. Whatever you think of the movies that came out last year, his sensibility is of a bygone time, and his middle-of-the-road presentations seem more creaky than ever. The writer's strike can be blamed for the writing of the show, but the over-reliance on montages and the bland presentation of almost everything else can be squarely laid at Cates' door. Let him have an Honorary Oscar, retire him to pasture, and bring someone else in.
I am also tired of hearing of everyone making a big deal of how all four acting winners this year were non-Americans as if it was a big deal. What is this, the 1940's? We should be celebrating the fact such diverse performers won (even if I wasn't rooting for Marion Cotillard), rather than acting as if their being foreign is a sign of "otherness." This isn't a sign of American actors not being good enough - the standard of acting is and has been at a premium everywhere - but simply of the Academy voters choosing others. Also, one of the reasons given for the broadcast's low ratings is how the movies being recognized aren't the popular ones. Might it have to do with fact that, Bourne Ultimatum and Knocked Up aside (maybe a few others), most of the tentpole movies of the last few years have not tried to break any artistic ground, but have simply been made for the money. Oscars aren't supposed to be about that.

There Will Be Oscars

2008-02-24T21:57:00.000-08:00

This is my 18th year in a row covering the Oscar ceremony in one venue or another, and no matter what you think of the fact of the show, or the shows themselves, there's always something to comment on, and this year was no different. Once again, however, I present the following caveat; anyone looking for talk about the fashions should go to ohnotheydidn't or someplace like that, not here. Anyway:

THE GOOD:

The length of the show: For the first time in recent memory, the show was less than three and a half hours. Were it not for the montages (more on those later) and the commercial breaks, it might have even been shorter. I'm sure it had to do with the writer's strike as well, but it's nice to be done with the show before midnight EST.

Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway: I may be in the minority here, but I actually liked their presenter banter. Aside from Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill (who took one joke and drove it to the ground), they were the only ones who tried to be funny, and they were.

Tilda Swinton: I knew I had lost my brother's Oscar pool when Swinton won, but I was otherwise thrilled. As I said in my earlier column here, she was the only performer who reinvented her part with this performance, never falling back on the stereotypical corporate villain. And her speech was cool too, especially for ribbing George Clooney about Batman.

"Raise it Up": I haven't seen August Rush, nor had I heard this song before tonight, but this was the only nominated song that was allowed to be performed the way it was performed in the movie; no gimmicks, no smothering by the orchestra, just the singers doing what they do. And anyone watching can tell young Jamia Simon Nash has the talent to go far.

"Falling Slowly": Even with the orchestra trying to smother Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, and even with the song being cutoff, the magic still shone through. And along with Tilda Swinton, this was the nominee I was most rooting for, so I was thrilled beyond belief. Even better that Jon Stewart brought out Irglova (reported at the urging of Colin Farrell - yay for him if it's true) so she could give her half of the acceptance speech.

Robert Boyle: While this Honorary Oscar winner has had a checkered career to say the least, anyone who worked on North by Northwest, In Cold Blood and Winter Kills in any capacity deserves to be up here.

Taxi to the Dark Side: While I was disappointed No End in Sight didn't win, I'm glad director Alex Gibney not only brought the funny (his wife wanting him to direct a romantic comedy instead), but also was able to be political without grandstanding.

THE BAD:

Jon Stewart: Last time he hosted, I thought he was very funny. This time, not so much. Admittedly, part of that may have had to do with the writer's strike not allowing as much preparation, but while he got off some good zingers in the opening monologue ("Welcome to the make-up sex!", along with his joke about Atonement capturing the passion and raw sexuality of Yom Kippur), but his pregnant gags got old quick, and his presenter intros were lame. And while bringing Irglova back to read her speech was classy, making a gay joke afterwards wasn't.

Montages: It was understandable they'd want to celebrate 80 years of Oscars, but there were too many of them. 80 years of Best Pictures was okay (even though it was a reminder of how few of them actually deserved the honor - The Greatest Show on Earth, anyone?), but we didn't need all those clips commemorating 79 years of acting winners, for example. And yes, she's singing an Oscar-winning song, but WHY HAVE CELINE DION ACCOMPANY A FUCKING MONTAGE?!?

Presenters: Again, maybe because of the writer's strike, they didn't have much to work with, but except for the ones I mentioned above, most of the presenters were bland, or in the case of Jennifer Hudson, not good at all. Admittedly, they were stuck with bland patter (or, in the case of Hilary Swank's intro to the "In Memoriam" segment, bad patter), but it still grated. Oh, and so did Jerry Seinfeld doing his Bee Movie schtick.

Enchanted: Admittedly, I'm told by those who saw the movie "Happy Working Song" works in context of the movie, and Amy Adams had it tough singing it alone without anything to react to, as she apparently did in the movie. But the other songs, and the production for them, were awful. Once again, the Music Branch needs an overhaul. Speaking of which...

Atonement: The only nominee I was actively rooting against was this film's nomination for Best Score (I knew it didn't have a shot at winning Best Picture, nor did Saoirse Ronan, who did a fine job, have a shot at winning Best Supporting Actress), because it was part of the reason I disliked the movie in the first place. Admittedly, this wasn't a great category to begin with, thanks to them disqualifying both Jonny Greenwood and Eddie Vedder, but all the nominees were better here than Atonement.

THE "HUH"?:

Documentary short: Having a platoon in Iraq present an award seemed like a good idea in theory. In practice, it felt very disconnected from the rest of the evening.

As for the awards themselves, except for Atonement winning (and Marion Cotillard; I thought she was okay, but Laura Linney and Julie Christie were both better), I didn't mind any of the other wins. I was happy to see The Bourne Ultimatum sweep the categories it was nominated for, and I'm happy for the Coen brothers (though I am a little disappointed "Roderick James," their editor pseudonym, didn't win Best Editing).

See you next year!

New DVD releases February 19

2008-02-20T23:25:00.000-08:00

Once again, here’s a week in DVD releases where there’s an abundance of movies to choose from. I already praised Michael Clayton when it came out in theaters. The rest of this week’s offerings don’t quite measure up, unfortunately, except for a new documentary about one of the creepiest subjects you’re ever to meet in a movie.
Before Ridley Scott’s American Gangster was set to be released, the drums were beating this would be the next great gangster film. It certainly boasted a handsome pedigree – directed by an Oscar nominee (Scott), written by an Oscar winner (Steven Zaillian), and starring two Oscar winners (Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe). And it tells a somewhat epic story – the rise of Frank Lucas (Washington), a former driver for gangster Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III) who, after Johnson’s death, rose to become the leading drug dealer in Harlem and the rest of New York City, until he was brought down by Richie Roberts (Crowe), a cop who worked with an FBI task force. But nearly two hours and 40 minutes later (the new DVD is longer by 20 minutes), I found myself wondering, “What was the point of all this?” There’s nothing really wrong with the movie – Zaillian does capture the intricacies of how Lucas’s rise and fall - except most of the time, it lacks a pulse. Scott may be aspiring to the level of The Godfather or Goodfellas, except Coppola and Scorsese were interested enough in their characters to explore what made them tic. Scott is a whiz at the technical aspects of the story – he gets the look of the 60’s and 70’s down without resorting to kitsch – but he hasn’t really cared about character development since maybe G.I. Jane. Lucas may have played it close to the vest to keep attention off himself, but while Washington certainly has the presence of a gangster, he doesn’t let us inside Lucas to find out what made him tic. Roberts’ character, meanwhile, doesn’t seem like anything more than Serpico lite, and Crowe likewise, while he looks the part of a cop, seems to be on autopilot (even the rage that drove him in, say, L.A. Confidential would be welcome here). The only people who make any impression here are those in small parts, like Williams, Ruby Dee as Lucas’ mother, particularly when she finally reveals she’s known how her son has made his money, and Josh Brolin as a corrupt cop who butts heads with both Lucas and Roberts. And the one scene Washington and Crowe get at the end shows what American Gangster might have been had Scott just been willing to dig deeper.
If you were a cynic, the fall of 2007 was when Hollywood discovered the Iraq War. Not being that flip, I tell people who feel that way it’s proves enough people in Hollywood were sick of not only the administration lying to get us into a false war, but the failure of the media to call them on it. And so, on the theory that doing something was better than nothing, the studios decided to make films that at least touched on the mess we’re in. The problem is, while the intentions were good, the end result is none of them, or at least the three movies up for discussion this week – Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, Brian DePalma’s Redacted, and Gavin Hood’s Rendition – really succeed either as drama or at illustrating what’s wrong with the war.
Haggis’ film is the only one claiming not to take an outward stance on the war, even though you certainly know how it stands when it ends. It also puts it in the context of a mystery, specifically a missing persons case. The missing person here is Mike Deerfield (Jonathan Tucker) the son of Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), a retired military man. Mike went off the fight in Iraq, but has been AWOL ever since, so Hank heads to New Mexico, where Mike’s army base here. Armed with little more than unclear footage Mike e-mailed him, Hank butts heads with the Army, led by Lieutenant Kirklander (Jason Patric), and the local police, led by Chief Buchwald (Josh Brolin), both of whom want him to stay out of it. Only Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), herself an outsider on the force because she’s a woman, agrees to help Hank find out what happened to his son, especially when it turns out he’s been murdered. And as Hank digs deeper into the mystery of what happened to his son when he got home, he gets a glimpse into what may have happened to him – and the rest of our soldiers – in Iraq.
That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, however, Haggis does the same thing that he did in Crash, which is to provide pat answers to complex questions. The scenes with the police, for example, feel less like how they would talk, and more like Haggis imposing a civics lesson, and Sanders feels more like a feminist mouthpiece rather than a real character. And while it’s understandable that the military would want to keep quiet how soldiers might be reacting after they returned from war, it doesn’t seem believable the police would go along with this. Finally, while it’s admirable Haggis would want Hank to have some less than admirable characteristics, they seemed shoehorned in (particularly his racist side, which is spoken out loud, when it would have been more believable if it was more subtle).
Some critics have praised Haggis’ movie for raising the question of what the war is doing to our soldiers there and when they come home. While this certainly his true, the movie doesn’t really go far enough in that, like mentioning how the same soldiers are being forced to fight again and again, and are mostly poor and minority kids being exploited. The one thing Haggis does cover is how the children of military people feel the need to live up to their fathers, which we get in one scene where Hank’s wife (Susan Sarandon) angrily tells him over the phone Mike would never had gone to Iraq in the first place if he didn’t feel the need to live up to his father. But that isn’t enough.
Despite all of these flaws, however, there is one reason to see Elah, and that’s Jones. During that scene with Sarandon, he says so much with his face, particularly the anguish of a man who is finally beginning to doubt not only what he is, but also what he stands for. His character is mostly painted in broad strokes (he has a routine he sticks to, no matter where he is), but he articulates through his face and manner better than through the dialogue what his character is feeling. He even sells the metaphor of the title, which comes from the David and Goliath story (he tells the story to Sanders’ son, who complains her son now wants a slingshot. It’s Theron’s only believable moment). It was because of him, and some powerful scenes here and there, that I was ready to recommend the film despite its flaws. Then came the final scene, with an Annie Lennox song playing over a scene that would have been powerful without it. Once again, Haggis doesn’t trust us to come to our own conclusions, and that’s what makes Elah, for all of its honorable intentions, fall short.
Redacted is nominally about a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq who, when one of their buddies is killed, takes revenge by kidnapping an Iraqi girl, raping her, and then killing her, while a horrified soldier is unable to stop it. Even though it’s inspired by a true story, this will sound familiar to anyone who saw Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War, which had a similar storyline. Redacted also shares many of Casualties’ flaws, namely, overwrought dialogue and one-note acting (though in this case, the actors are all unknowns, so it’s a little more forgivable than having gifted thespians like John C. Reilly and John Leguizamo be one-note), though unlike Casualties, it at least doesn’t have an egregiously bad ending. What makes Redacted worth watching, however, is DePalma using the storyline as an excuse to explore how the war is covered. This isn’t shot in a “traditional” way – the only time DePalma and cinematographer Jonathan Cliff make this look like a traditional movie is with scenes that are shot by a documentary crew covering the platoon. The rest of it is handheld camera shot by the soldiers themselves, security cameras, or postings on the Internet. DePalma has criticized how the media is covering the Iraq war, or rather, how the media is not allowed to cover the war because their reporting, both visually and verbally, is being censored (DePalma also criticized Magnolia Pictures, the company releasing the movie, for censoring his film), and his film certainly addresses that. In his Godard-like way, DePalma is also exploring if it’s even possible to cover a war in a realistic way. And unlike the other two films under discussion here, which take incendiary subjects (how the war has affected our soldiers, how our government is sanctioning torture) only to back away from them, you can feel the full thrust of DePalma’s anger here, which is good. I just wish he had let someone else write the script so he could be showing how flesh-and-blood humans were acting in the midst of this chaos, instead of just stick figures. DePalma’s film is an interesting one, to be sure, and better than the traditional DePalma naysayers make it out to be (I am neither a naysayers nor an apologist when it comes to DePalma; I’m in the middle), but it’s still a frustrating film.
Rendition is another Iraq film set in the context of genre, in this case a thriller. Certainly the opening scene, where a suicide bomber blows up a marketplace in an unnamed city in North Africa, is as unsettling as any scene in an action/thriller this year. Director Gavin Hood doesn’t use music to set up foreboding, and characters seem to just be going about their business when the violence happens. Unfortunately, that’s the last bit of subtlety of the movie before it resorts to anvil dropping. It seems Anwar (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer, is suspected of being in cahoots with the terrorists who planned the bombing, and while on his way home, he’s whisked out of the airport, and taken first to a U.S. holding area, and then flown to that same unnamed African country where he can be tortured until he gives up the information needed. While Anwar’s pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) tries in vain to get her husband back, by using her ex-boyfriend Alan (Peter Sarsgaard), aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), to make inquiries, a CIA analyst named Douglas (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is observing Anwar’s interrogation, becomes disgusted by what he sees.
Of course, the U.S. allowing, performing, and outsourcing torture is a real life issue that shames us all, and I have no problem with a movie wanting to draw attention to it. The problem is the movie hedges its bets. All of the characters are one-note, and that’s especially irritating in the case of Douglas, who seems impossibly naïve for a CIA agent, even an analyst. And while it makes sense that the government figures who are outsourcing the torture, represented here by Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), the government official overseeing the policy, would want to make the appearance of having their hands clean, but the actual interrogators are one-note thugs, as if to say, “See, the U.S. isn’t the problem, it’s Arabs torturing Arabs!” Worse, there’s a Romeo-and-Juliet storyline that not only distracts from the story, but also pays off by making you rethink the value of that opening scene. There are three Oscar winners (Arkin, Streep, Witherspoon) and one nominee (Gyllenhaal) in the cast, but they all have nothing to do except glower (Arkin and Streep) or pout (Witherspoon, Gyllenhaal). The only one who makes any mark on the movie is Sarsgaard, who at least looks like he knows how his character is supposed to be, not just a symbol but also a person. Would that the rest of Rendition had followed his lead.
Ang Lee followed up his transcendent 2005 film Brokeback Mountain with Lust, Caution, another period piece dealing with a forbidden love affair. This time, the love story is told against the backdrop of a WWII spy drama. Chi Chia Wong (Wei Tang) is a student at university in China during the Japanese occupation. While there, she gets recruited by Min Yu Kuang (Leehorn Wang) into a theater group that is also planning tactics against the Japanese. Specifically, they decide to target Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a Chinese government official who’s collaborating with the Japanese. So Wong poses as the wife of an industrialist who is no longer in the country, befriends Yee’s wife (Joan Chen), and waits for Yee to seduce her so she can set him up to be killed.
That’s a pretty potent setup for a movie, even if it is familiar. The problem is, the film starts in 1942, when Wong has already situated herself into Mrs. Yee’s inner circle (she and her friends go shopping and play mah-jongg together), and the middle of the film is a flashback to how she got there, which includes one mistake where she had to flee, until she could situate herself there again. All of that is gorgeously shot by Lee and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (who also shot Brokeback Mountain), but it goes on for far too long. Lee is known for inserting you inside the details of every world he explores, be it the 1970’s middle class (The Ice Storm) or ancient Chinese warriors (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), but in this case, he needed someone to tell him not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Lust, Caution was rated NC-17, and released as such, for the sex scenes between Leung and Tang. According to Anthony Lane (who did not like the film), they take place ninety-five minutes into this two hour and forty minutes film, and they certainly justify the rating – this feels like two people clawing at each other as much for lust as for love. And while it's easy to expect a good performance from Leung, the surprise here is Tang, an untested actress who not only holds her own against Leung, but also is able convincingly portray the untested young woman as well as the spy who keeps everything close to the vest. I just wish Lee had done a better job balancing the sex scenes with everything else going on. It's easy to say this, but Lee is too cautious in this tale for his own good.
Noah Baumbach has become one of the better writer-directors to feature hyper-articulate characters who nevertheless can’t connect well with others. Although he started out with what seemed to be just another generational chronicle of slackers – Kicking & Screaming – he moved beyond that into more personal fare. In The Squid and the Whale, he told the tale of how a teenage boy (and his younger brother) was affected by the split of his parents, and especially how he sees them. Much was made of how the parents in that movie were inspired by Baumbach’s real-life parents, but the real kick was seeing Baumbach having the maturity to see both the point of view of his stand-in and his parents. Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach’s latest, continues in his more personal vein (it’s also the first film he’s done with his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh). Margot (Nicole Kidman), a writer, has come to visit her estranged sister Pauline (Leigh) in time for Pauline’s wedding to Malcolm (Jack Black), an unemployed musician. Margot, who’s there with her son Claude (Zane Pais), is the type of person who sees the bad in every person around, especially if they’re family (she’s also estranged from her husband (John Turturro)), and she’s got a field to choose from here: Malcolm (“He’s like the guys we rejected when we were 16,” she says about him to Pauline), Pauline, and even Claude, who’s making his small steps towards adulthood. And while Malcolm and Pauline are trying to keep things on an even keel (when Malcolm gets mad about something, he exclaims, “In proportion to what’s going on, this is right!”), there are buried secrets that will eventually bring everything to a head.
Except the problem is, in The Squid and the Whale, the story was building to something; the oldest son realizing his father wasn’t the heroic character he thought he was, and there’s no such build to the story here. Baumbach’s role models here are Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer (it’s no accident Leigh’s character is named Pauline), and he shares their propensity, as I said before, to write about hyper-articulate characters that can’t quite connect to each other. What he seems to forget here is they also had a tendency to get self-indulgent with their characters and writing, and he falls into that trap here. There are scenes that play well in of themselves (as when Margot tries to climb a tree she used to climb as a child), but many scenes end up going nowhere. Also, I could predict some of the plot turns, which might not have mattered if the movie was building to anything. It’s too bad, because for the most part, the performances are all spot on. Kidman has made, to be sure, some questionable choices this decade (The Stepford Wives, Bewitched), but she’s also taken some interesting chances, and Margot certainly represents that. If we never really understand her bitterness, it’s not her fault. Leigh, who would normally play the Margot character, as Pauline gives her warmest performance since maybe the hooker character she played in Miami Blues. And Pais isn’t a movie teen, but a very realistic teen. Black is the one bum note here; he’s not terrible, and is perfectly willing to tamp down his mannerisms, but he also seems somewhat lost at times. And that goes for the movie: “It’s meant to be funny,” Malcolm says at one point, but it isn’t enough to make this story ultimately work.
In Barbet Schroeder’s Reversal of Fortune, Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver), who helped Klaus Von Bulow (Jeremy Irons) successfully overturn his murder conviction, discusses Bulow’s initial phone call to him with his son, telling him it reminds him of his dream where Hitler calls asking Dershowitz to be his lawyer. Dershowitz claims instead of just killing him outright, he would take Hitler’s case, and then kill him. I thought of that scene when I watched Schroeder’s latest film, Terror’s Advocate, a documentary about Jacques Verges, a lawyer who seems like just the type who would have directed Hitler.
Verges cut a contradictory figure. The son of a Vietnamese mother and a French father, he saw himself in life as an oppressed figure, and therefore put his lot with those who he thought were oppressed. This meant identifying himself with many revolutionaries, including those from Algeria and Palestine, and identifying with their causes, which ranged from left wing to communist. Yet he wasn’t someone to live the proletarian life, since he had a taste for the finer things in life. Although he fiercely defended his positions, and admitted using plenty of lawyer’s tricks in defending his clients (he boasts not one of his clients was ever executed), he was able to negotiate with his adversaries without antagonizing them (apparently, since no one who hates Verges is really interviewed here). His attraction to two of his clients – Djamila Bourhired, one of the leaders for Algerian independence, and Magdalena Kopp, a German terrorist and wife to notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal – was apparently as much romantic as it was political, as he married Bourhired and pursued Kopp (which eventually fractured his relationship with Carlos).While Schroeder includes Verges’ somewhat disingenuous defense of Pol Pot, the eventual dictator of Cambodia and a client, as a way of showing Verges’ darker side (Verges downplayed the genocide that occurred under Pot’s regime), he basically takes no outward position on Verges, preferring to let us make up our mind about him. So we get to see, for example Verges’ justification for defending former Nazi Klaus Barbie (he decided to put what he saw as France’s totalitarian methods on trial), without exploring what may have been his anti-Semitism. And most of the figures interviewed are sympathetic to Verges’ point of view, and Schroeder might have included one or two more who might not have liked him (though we get the feeling Carlos, who is interviewed by phone, no longer has much use for Verges). Still, Schroeder confronts us with the justification for terrorist acts throughout history, and it’s not an easy movie to shake off.

My Oscar picks

2008-02-17T22:30:00.000-08:00

With the Oscars a week away, I will attempt to make a prediction in the major categories, even though I’m pretty lousy at it. I’ll also tell you whom I’d vote for if I were a member of the Academy (aside, of course, from No End in Sight winning Best Documentary and “Falling Slowly” winning best original song).

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Atonement (Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Ian McEwan), Away From Her (Sarah Polley, based on the story “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Ronald Harwood, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby), No Country for Old Men (Ethan and Joel Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy), There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair)
Who will win: Ethan and Joel Coen. For Polley, the nomination is the award, Harwood won here recently, and some thought Hampton’s screenplay missed the essence of the book. Anderson might win here if the Academy wants to throw him a bone, but Daniel Day-Lewis will probably cover the film. Besides, the Coens won the WGA award.
Who should win: Paul Thomas Anderson. I’m one of those people who thought Hampton took a complex book and made it too simplistic, and Harwood’s screenplay was also the weakest part of his film. Polley and the Coen brothers both did outstanding work, but neither of them constructed their work as well as Anderson.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Juno (Diablo Cody), Lars and the Real Girl (Nancy Oliver), Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy), Ratatouille (Brad Bird, Jim Capobianco, Jan Pinkava), The Savages (Tamara Jenkins)
Who will win: Diablo Cody. Oliver probably wrote the most despised nominee on this list, an animated film has never won this category, and for Jenkins, the nomination is the award. Gilroy has a good chance, being a respected veteran who wrote a respected screenplay, but Cody is the darling of the moment, and she won the WGA award.
Who should win: Tony Gilroy. I haven’t seen Lars and the Real Girl yet, but while all the other screenplays were very good, especially Jenkins’, Gilroy wrote the most entertaining and artful of them.

BEST DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood, Ethan and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men, Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton, Jason Reitman, Juno, Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Who will win: Ethan and Joel Coen. For Gilroy and Reitman, the screenplays of their respective films overshadowed their directing work, and while Schnabel dazzled many with his direction, his film didn’t get a Best Picture nod, and he’s not particularly well liked. Anderson has a lot of passionate fans, but having won the DGA, this is the Coens to lose.
Who should win: Paul Thomas Anderson. There’s not a bum nominee on this list, but Anderson’s film showed the most ambition and talent on display.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There, Ruby Dee, American Gangster, Saoirse Ronan, Atonement, Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone, Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Who will win: Ruby Dee. This is the toughest category to pick, because there’s no clear favorite – only Ronan will have to be satisfied with the nomination. Blanchett received the acclaim, but she’s won here recently. Ryan won most of the awards, and she’s well liked, but not enough people saw the movie. Swinton is well liked, and she may win the movie’s only prize, but she doesn’t seem to have any push behind her. My guess is, despite the smallness of her role, the Academy will find the sentiment too much to ignore, follow the lead of the SAG Awards, and reward Dee.
Who should win: Tilda Swinton. Dee is a treasure, but she was barely in her movie, and while Ronan was good, she struggled with a weak script. Blanchett and Ryan were both terrific, but neither reinvented their parts like Swinton did hers.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War, Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild, Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Who will win: Javier Bardem. For Affleck, the nomination is the reward, Hoffman won too recently, and like Swinton, Wilkinson is respected but has no push behind him. Holbrook could win the sentimental vote, but Bardem seems too formidable a foe.
Who should win: Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’m in the minority, but I didn’t like Affleck’s performance – it seemed too mannered. The other three performances were terrific, but Hoffman was most indispensable to his movie. Admittedly, he also had an MVP year, but he really was that good in this film.

BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Julie Christie, Away from Her, Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose, Laura Linney, The Savages, Ellen Page, Juno
Who will win: Julie Christie. For Page, the nomination is the reward at this point, not enough people saw Linney’s film, and everyone agrees Blanchett’s nod here is for the lesser of her two performances. Cotillard’s got a lot of passionate fans, but Christie is well liked by everyone.
Who should win: Laura Linney. Blanchett deserved her supporting nod, but has no business in this category, and Cotillard tried, but was defeated by the screenplay. Christie and Page were terrific, but Linney did best in playing an inherently sympathetic character in an unsympathetic way while still retaining our sympathy.

BEST ACTOR: George Clooney, Michael Clayton, Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood, Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd, Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah, Viggo Mortenson, Eastern Promises
Who will win: Daniel Day Lewis. Basically, this is Lewis’ to lose, especially since Clooney won too soon, Depp is playing a competing crazy, not enough people saw Jones’ film, and for Mortenson, the nomination is the reward.
Who should win: Tommy Lee Jones. Depp was good at being angry, but not great at anything else, and Mortenson was defeated by a plot turn near the end, damaging otherwise fine work. Clooney was terrific, and Day-Lewis was magnificent, but Jones went further in letting an inherently likable character be unlikable.

BEST PICTURE: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood
Who will win: No Country for Old Men. Atonement lost the buzz it had back in September, plus it’s the only picture without a Best Director nomination, and while Michael Clayton is well liked, it doesn’t have the passion behind it. Juno has an outside chance if people want a feel-good movie, and there’s a loud fanbase behind There Will Be Blood, but this seems like the Coens’ year.
Who should win: There Will Be Blood. No other film this year had as much ambition, or the talent that matched that ambition. No other film explored as much what this country was, and is, about. Also, Atonement was very disappointing, and while the other three are very good, particularly Michael Clayton, none of them aimed as high.

See you on the 24th!

New DVD releases February 12

2008-02-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

It’s been popular to say about Ben Affleck that he reached his peak with his Oscar win for co-writing and co-starring in Good Will Hunting, and while his co-writer and co-star Matt Damon went on to an interesting career combining good commercial films (the Bourne trilogy) and interesting left turns (The Good Shepard), Affleck stranded himself among brain dead blockbusters. I can hardly count myself as an Affleck fan, and even I would say that view is quite reductive. True, Affleck hardly distinguished himself in movies like Armageddon, Daredevil, and Gigli, and letting his off-screen antics overwhelm his on-screen performances was never going to help his career. But he was a good collaborator with Kevin Smith (Mallrats and Jersey Girl notwithstanding), playing a more than credible romantic lead in Chasing Amy, a more than credible villain in Dogma, and had a lot of fun in Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. He was good in supporting roles in Shakespeare in Love and Boiler Room, and while he struggled with his parts in Bounce, Changing Lanes, and Paycheck, at least the movies themselves showed good taste in projects. And he came back in with his surprisingly affecting performance in Hollywoodland. Now, with Gone Baby Gone, he makes his directorial debut, and while he’s still got a ways to go, he may have a future behind the camera yet.
Affleck also co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Stockard, adapting the Dennis Lehane novel, the fourth of his series of novels about detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), who at this point are partners personally as well as professionally. When a little girl named Amanda goes missing, and her aunt Bea (Amy Madigan) appeals to them to join the police in helping find her, Kenzie and Gennaro are both reluctant to take the job, because they guess it would only end in heartbreak. And the police, headed by Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), who runs a unit devoted to finding missing children, and detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton), don’t want Kenzie’s help either. Finally, Kenzie is not encouraged by Amanda’s mother Helene (Amy Ryan), an alcoholic and crack addict who has a chip on her shoulder against the world. But Kenzie and Gennaro do end up taking the case, only to find as bad as they thought things would get, it actually is much worse.
Just as Good Will Hunting benefited from Affleck (and Damon) knowing the neighborhood of Boston so well, so does Gone Baby Gone. Affleck has cast many of the smaller parts with Boston natives, and he films the city well while avoiding the obvious landmarks (Fenway Park). However, he does lack a certain cinematic sense as a director, and as a writer (this may have been apparent in Good Will Hunting, but Gus Van Sant knew how to make that picture move). A good example comes early on in the movie, when Kenzie and Gennaro go to a bar Helene used to hang out in – if it wasn’t for the acting, you’d never know the scene was supposed to be tense (the patrons and bartender are decidedly hostile towards the detectives), because Affleck shoots it in such a plodding manner. The scenes between Kenzie and Gennaro also suffer here – Affleck spends too much time on their personal relationship, and not enough on their professional one, whereas Lehane gave equal time to both. I always thought Monaghan was a bit too wan for the role, but she might have been able to bring a grittiness to the role had Affleck allowed her to. Finally, I’m admittedly a big fan of the novel, but the movie often just seemed like a greatest hits version of the novel, with no flow to it. It doesn’t help Affleck and Stockard try to make the motive for what really happened to Amanda more of a mystery than it was in the novel; it cheapens it somehow.
Still, once the movie hits the halfway point, it does settle down into what made the novel so riveting. And except for Monaghan, Affleck gets great work from his cast. Harris, Freeman, Ashton, and Madigan are all playing parts they’ve played in the past, but they’re able to do their thing again in style. And as a fan of TV’s The Wire, I was thrilled to see Michael K. Williams in the small role of a cop who’s friendly with Kenzie (his role is bigger in the novel), even though I only saw it as Omar playing a cop. But the real surprises here are Ryan and Affleck’s brother Casey. I also mostly know Ryan from The Wire, as Beadie Russell, the dock officer who helps investigate the major case in Season 2. On the show, she was friendly with the dockworkers but quiet and unassuming with her colleagues, which cloaked her intelligence. As written, Helene could have been a one-dimensional white trash addict, but Ryan invests her with an anger against the world and a surprising vulnerability – when she finally realizes the enormity of her part in Amanda’s disappearance, and begs Kenzie to find her, you understand what makes Kenzie defend Helene’s fitness as a parent later to Gennaro. As for Casey Affleck, I wasn’t a fan of his in the Jesse James movie, and wasn’t looking forward to him here. He seemed a little young for the part as well. But he turns that into his advantage here, showing an inner toughness and a desire not to be pushed around or taken for granted. And, of course, he shows off Kenzie’s vulnerability as well. As the movie shows Ben’s possible future as a director, it also shows off Casey’s possible future as a leading man.
If they’re enjoyable enough, sometimes movies that don’t quite hang together can still be a better time than movies that are well crafted but empty. Such is the case with John Turturro’s Romance & Cigarettes, which finally came out in theaters last September after being on the shelf for two years due to studio trouble. Although Turturro has made a big leap from his first directing effort, the earnest but plodding Mac (I never saw his next effort, the theatrical movie Illuminata), he still has problems here; the movie takes a tragic turn in the last third that it doesn’t quite earn. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that next to Once, this was the best musical I saw at the movies last year. The story, like in most musicals, is pretty simple; Nick Murder (James Gandolfini), a construction worker, is married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon), a dressmaker, but is also involved with the sexy Tula (Kate Winslet), and when Kitty finds out and throws him out, Nick tries to win her back. What distinguishes the movie is the characters will often break into song – not into originals, but singing along to established songs. So Gandolfini belts out Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Man Without Love” (along with singing garbagemen), Sarandon (though her voice is dubbed) and a gospel choir rip through “Piece of my Heart,” Winslet sexes up Connie Francis’ “Do You Love Me Like You Kiss Me,” and even Christopher Walken, as Kitty’s cousin Bo, gets into the act by crooning “Delilah” (as well as dancing, of course). This isn’t the only craziness Turturro throws in – Mary-Louise Parker and Aida Turturro both play Nick’s daughters (Mandy Moore, who belts out “I Want Candy,” is the third daughter), even though they’re only a few years younger than Gandolfini in real life – but trust me, it all fits. I think it was Turturro who called this a working-class Dennis Potter musical, and the label fits because like Potter, Turturro knows how to use music to express his character’s feelings. And it’s definitely working class – the characters are unapologetically profane (the movie earns its R rating), but none of them are cartoonish (Tula actually loves Nick), and none of the performers condescend to their characters. True, there may be a touch of Ralph Kramden in Gandolfini’s performance, but that’s inevitable, and Gandolfini even sings well. And Sarandon and Winslet are as alluring as they’ve ever been. Along with Once, this was the only other musical I saw last year that never sacrifices feeling for form. Do yourself a favor and check this one out.
The problem with James Gray’s We Own the Night is not the fact the story is familiar – hell, There Will Be Blood, my favorite movie of last year, tells a very familiar story. The problem is Gray, who also wrote the film, tries to act like you’ve never seen this movie before. Once again, Gray turns to the twin poles of family conflict and crime. This time, the family members in conflict are Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix), a nightclub owner in 1980’s Brighton Beach, and his brother Joe Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg), who, like their father Bert (Robert Duvall), is a cop. Bobby’s nightclub is owned by Russians who, as it turns out, do business with the Russian mob, which involves drug dealing. Bobby at first turns a blind eye to all of this, particularly because he and Joe don’t get along, but when mobsters try to kill Joe, Bobby agrees to work for the cops. Gray has certainly advanced stylistically – there’s a car chase in the rain that’s up there with the great ones, and the first look at the nightclub (to the tune of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”) is a tracking shot that doesn’t make you think of Scorsese. And there’s no fault with any of the performers; Phoenix, Wahlberg and Duvall may be tracking in familiar territory, but they go through their paces, and Eva Mendes is also good as Bobby’s girlfriend. But Gray is more concerned with punching up the portentous tone of the movie than bringing anything new to the table or at least finding a way to make the familiar more interesting.
For all of you who only know George of the Jungle from either the catchy theme song (“Watch out for that tree!”), or the energetic but ultimately bland Disney live-action movie version in 1997, you should check out the complete TV series, which is being released on DVD this week. As Jay Ward’s previous, and best-known, series Rocky & Bullwinkle spoofed serials and spy movies, George parodies Tarzan. And unlike the movie, which relied too much on physical humor, George at its best crackles with the verbal wit that characterizes Ward at his best – for example, George tells Ursula (his girlfriend) he knows a white hunter named Weevil has gone because “See no Weevil, hear no Weevil, speak no Weevil.” The DVD set also includes the two lesser-known and less funny segments that also aired on the show, Tom Slick, the race car driver, and the superhero Super Chicken, but it’s worth it just to watch George, Ursula (or is it Fella?), Shep the elephant dog, and the ape named Ape. Just watch out for that tree.

An Evening with Sidney Lumet, and RIP Roy Scheider

2008-02-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

Although film repertory houses having been dying out all over the country for decades now, a few are still going strong, and one of the better ones is Film Forum in New York City. It’s there that a co-worker and I went to see one of the true survivors of the movie business, Sidney Lumet. It’s true when people hear the phrase “New York filmmaker,” most of them think of Martin Scorsese, or maybe Woody Allen, or Spike Lee, but Lumet also belongs in that category, even though that label is also somewhat reductive towards his rich and varied career. It’s true he’s made his share of stinkers (I have no desire to sit through Deathtrap or The Wiz again), but when he’s good, he’s very good, as films like Prince of the City, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, and his new one, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead demonstrate. So I was very glad when the host and interviewer, Foster Hirsch, left my co-worker and tickets to tonight’s show (Hirsch is a customer at the video store I work at, and my co-worker and I are friendly with him).
As you might figure, the theater (which, alas, is pretty tiny; Film Forum gets great movies, but as befitting a theater depending on memberships, has lousy seating. As glad I am that Martin Scorsese spends a good amount of his money on film preservation, I wish he or someone would throw some of that money towards making sure the theaters showing those restored movies were nicer. But I digress) was packed, and as entertainment, we were shown the original theatrical trailers for both 12 Angry Men and Murder on the Orient Express, neither of which resembled the finished movie (we can debate till the cows come home on how today’s movies compare to past movies, but the trailers today are undeniably better than the ones even 30 years ago). Then we saw a rare clip of Lumet acting, as a Dead End kid in One Third of a Nation, opposite Sylvia Sidney. Finally, Lumet and Hirsch came out, to great applause.
Although Lumet did talk briefly about his showbiz origins (his parents were in the Yiddish theater, and he is one showbiz veteran who actually encourages children to go into the business), and how he lived through his early years (he grew up during the Depression, “which most of you may come to know” he joked), mostly, Hirsch talked about Lumet’s 50 years in films. Of course, they talked about how fast Lumet usually works (after working with him on The Verdict, Paul Newman called him “the only man I know who would double-park outside a whorehouse”), which Lumet calls not a product of working in television (which is where he got his start), but just his natural tempo. First, they showed a clip of 12 Angry Men, and Lumet mentioned how little film he shot compare to most films (60,000 feet of film, whereas most films shoot over a million feet). Hirsch also praised the opening scene, where you see the defendant’s face, and immediately, you think of him as a person rather than an abstract thing the jury will later deliberate over. Following that, we saw a clip of The Fugitive Kind, and Hirsch mentioned, for the only time that evening, how he thought it didn’t quite work. Lumet refused to tell tales out of school, but he did mention how star Anna Magnani had a difficult time on the set, because she wasn’t fluent in English, and was recovering from a romantic breakup. He also told a tale illustrating his approach to actors; Marlon Brando had a big speech to deliver in the movie, and every take, at the same exact point, he blew the take. Lumet felt it had something to do with something personal Brando had told him that was interfering with his ability to deliver the speech, but he felt mentioning that personal thing to Brando would have violated his trust. After about 30 takes, Brando finally got the speech right. Afterwards, Brando asked Lumet why he didn’t say anything, and when Lumet said it wasn’t his place, Brando kissed him on the cheek, and they never had a problem again.
One of the knocks against Lumet is that he has no visual style. His counter to that is he has one, it’s just always subordinate to the story and the characters. An illustration of this came with the next clip shown, from Long Day’s Journey Into Night, based on the Eugene O’Neill play, and one of Lumet’s best. It’s when Katharine Hepburn delivers a long speech on the unsuitability of a doctor treating her husband (Ralph Richardson), and the camera holds on a medium shot of her, her husband, and their sons (Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell) at the dinner table, instead of cutting away. He also pointes out that each of the characters were shot differently and lighted differently, and mentioned any critic worth their salt should recognize something like that. After that came a clip from The Pawnbroker, where a ride in a subway car reminds Rod Steiger of his time in a concentration camp. Since the film, to Lumet, was about memory (in his book Making Movies, Lumet distinguishes what the story of the movie is about, and what the movie itself is about), he edited the scene so the regular subway and the prisoner trains were done in precise increments, to illustrate Steiger’s state of mind. While Hirsch brought up how hammy Steiger’s performances can be, Lumet said he’d rather work with someone who gave too much than too little (which, to be fair, is another knock against him). That same year, Lumet made Fail Safe, which had the unfortunate luck to come out after Dr. Strangelove, which had a similar story (albeit a wildly different approach). They were made at the same time and released by the same studio, and Lumet wanted his film released first (he thought it would even help Strangelove), but to no avail. Next up was The Hill, Lumet’s first collaboration with Sean Connery (they made four movies together), and Lumet agreed with Hirsch that he tended to work with actors he liked many times (he claimed to avoid the lunatics when he could).
One of his most famous partnerships, of course, was with Al Pacino. They only made two movies together, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, but both of them are among both Lumet and Pacino’s seminal works. Lumet mentioned how with Pacino, as with other acting greats he worked with, he merely got out of his way and let him act. He also mentioned again how the theme of Dog Day Afternoon – in Lumet’s words, that freaks aren’t as freaky as you might think – dictated the look of the film, which strove for realism. Totally opposed to that is Network, which was highly stylized, and they showed the famous “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” scene. Lumet also illustrated how modest he is about credit when he mentioned how the film is really Paddy Chayefsky’s and not his, crediting Chayefsky with wrapping the message inside of humor to make it work better (Hirsch also brought up the hard part about watching it today; namely, everything the film predicted would happen has come true, except no one has killed anyone on the air for ratings – yet. So except for Faye Dunaway, it’s not as funny as it may have been 30 years ago). After that, Hirsch returned to Lumet’s New York oeuvre with Prince of the City, my personal favorite of his films, and Lumet mentioned how he took a writing credit on the movie only because Jay Presson Allen asked him to work out the structure for her, since she was busy writing a couple of other movies. He also mentioned how he felt his ambiguous feelings towards the Treat Williams character – was he a hero or a rat? – helped the film. Another one of Lumet’s common genres is the crime film, and while The Verdict is more a legal drama, it does deal with a crime. Lumet denied any life experience influencing his choice of movies, but did admit he finds cops, lawyers, and their stories fascinating. Finally, we ended with a clip from his most recent movie, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a melodrama, and while Lumet has directed all kinds of movies, he is still fond of melodrama as a genre (his next film, Getting Out, is also a melodrama).
I do wish the audience had been allowed to ask Lumet questions (I would have asked if any more of his films, including The Offence, one of his best and most unsung movies, was coming out on DVD in the near future). I also would have chosen some slightly different clips - from Prince of the City, for example, I would have chosen when Treat Williams runs into one of his former partners near the elevator and begs forgiveness, rather than when Williams is chasing a junkie in a parking lot in the rain (although Lumet said he was proud of that moment because Kurosawa praised it). Finally, while Hirsch made it more a conversation than an interview, which meant it was that much more entertaining and insightful, I do wish he had challenged Lumet a little more. Still, I definitely got my money’s worth out of the night. Lumet knows his stuff, and he knows how to please the crowd.
And now, a few words on the passing of Roy Scheider. I know there are people who gnash their teeth at yet another piece extolling how great the movies of the 1970’s were, but one thing you can undeniably say is male actors who weren’t necessarily traditional leading men were allowed to flourish as they hadn’t since the 30’s and early 40’s, and haven’t since. Scheider was one of those. Although he doesn’t have a lot of screen time in Klute, where he played Jane Fonda’s pimp, and he was second banana to Gene Hackman in The French Connection (he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but unlike Hackman, he lost), he lends both movies an air of authenticity, which he carried to the enjoyable knock off of the latter, The Seven-Ups. Still, he had more range than just a hard-nosed tough guy, as he showed in perhaps his two most celebrated roles – Chief Brody in Jaws, and Joe Gideon in All That Jazz, which garnered him his second nomination. In the former, he played a man not in control, with appealing vulnerability and confusion (as when a grieving mother slaps him in the face) that serves as almost a riposte to Robert Shaw’s masculine caricature Quint, and in the latter, Bob Fosse’s 8 ½ (for all intents and purposes), he not only showed he could sing and dance, but he also played the character with the least amount of self-indulgence that I’ve seen in any movie remake/homage of Fellini’s film. And while neither Marathon Man, where he played a supporting role as a spy who happens to be Dustin Hoffman’s brother, nor Last Embrace, where he plays a widower spy who thinks someone is trying to kill him, were completely successful as pictures, each featured Scheider to great effect; watch his confrontation with Olivier in the former, or when he finds out the identity of the killer in the latter.
While on stage, he started the 1980’s off in triumph with his turn in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (he started out in Shakespeare plays, and he explained his love for them when he said that whatever the royalty may be saying or doing, it’s the gravedigger who explains what’s really going on), Scheider’s career hit a rough patch starting that decade and never really stopped. As critic Ryan Gibley pointed out in It Don’t Worry Me, his excellent critical study of 1970’s cinema, Scheider would come more and more to seem like a man out of his time when every leading man all of a sudden needed to look like Tom Cruise In fact, when Scheider got his own TV series in the 1990’s, SeaQuest, he later complained he was being phased out in favor of younger co-star Jonathan Brandis. Still, Scheider was appealing even in substandard fare like Still of the Night, Blue Thunder, and 52 Pickup, as well as better, if not great, fare like 2010 and The Myth of Fingerprints. And he shone in the highly underrated The Russia House as a spy who believes in glasnost, but maybe not Sean Connery (his interrogation of Connery is a highlight), he chewed up the scenery with style in Naked Lunch while giving new meaning to the term “mad doctor,” and was menacing as a gangster in the very offbeat Romeo is Bleeding (although, like everyone else, he’s overshadowed by Lena Olin as a hitwoman). He will be missed.

New DVD releases February 5

2008-02-06T07:28:00.000-08:00

According to the song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in Carousel, June is busting out all over, but this month seems to be the one busting out all over with big movies. Seven big named movies are being released this week, and the only one I haven’t seen is The Jane Austen Book Club. So let’s get right to it.
When he gave Backbeat a positive review, the late Gene Siskel mentioned he had given a positive review to every movie about the Beatles. I thought of him when I was watching Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, her attempt to tell a tale of the 60’s through use of 33 of the Beatles songs, ranging from “It Won’t Be Long” to “Let it Be.” I also thought of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the first attempt at doing something like this, which turned out to be akin to watching a train wreck, and American Dreams, the TV show about a family going through the turmoil of the 60’s. Taymor’s movie is better than the former (which is damning it with faint praise, of course), but reminded me too much of the latter to be entirely successful. For all of Taymor’s visual audacity, and some inventive reworking of the classic Beatles oeuvre (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand” reinterpreted as a song of longing), the film never really transcends the clichéd storytelling.
In a nutshell, the plot revolves around Jude (Jim Sturgess), a dockworker from Liverpool who comes to America to look for his father (Robert Clohessy), a janitor at Princeton. While there, he’s befriended by Max (Joe Anderson), a rebellious student, and his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), who at first seems like the all-American girl. Max eventually drops out of Princeton and moves to New York City with Jude, and Lucy joins them when her boyfriend Daniel is killed in Vietnam. While there, they and a host of people, including Sadie (Dana Fuchs), a flower child singer, and JoJo (Martin Luther), a psychedelic guitarist, become swept up in the revolution sweeping the country. Also, Jude, a cartoonist, falls in love with Lucy, but becomes alienated from her as she becomes obsessed with the antiwar movement. Again, this sounds awfully familiar, and the stilted dialogue (“I’m sorry if I’m not the man with the megaphone, but this is what I do” Jude retorts to Lucy at one point). It could also be that Sturgess irritated me most of the time he was on screen, especially when he was singing. As for that singing, I alluded to how Taymor and her companion, composer Elliot Goldenthal, have some interesting interpretations of some of the Beatle classics, like Max singing “Happiness is a Warm Gun” at a VA hospital while a nurse (Salma Hayek) administers a morphine shot to him. But just as often, the songs are done too literally, as when Jude and the others living at the apartment try to get Prudence (T.V. Carpio) to come out of the room she’s locked herself into by singing “Dear Prudence.” Wood manages to transcend the clichéd material most of the time, and Hayek, Bono (as Dr. Robert, singing “I Am the Walrus”), and Eddie Izzard (as Mr. Kite) deliver sharp cameos. But the definitive movie using Beatles music as a backdrop (as opposed to being about the Beatles themselves) has yet to be made.
After sitting on the shelf for almost two years, Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford inspired either love-it-or-hate-it reactions upon its release. I’m afraid I’m closer to the latter camp. It’s not like there’s nothing to recommend about this film. Cinematographer Roger Deakins gives this picture a dreamlike quality, and Brad Pitt is both charismatic and dangerous as the legendary outlaw Jesse James (although the film does shy away from some of his more unlikable qualities, like being a Confederate rebel). There’s also good supporting work from Sam Shepard as Jesse’s brother Frank (even though he’s only in the first half hour of the movie), and Sam Rockwell as Charley Ford. But the narration by Hugh Ross drowns the film in self-importance. Worse, while I normally like Casey Affleck (he’s much better in next week’s release Gone Baby Gone), he comes off mannered and forced here as Robert Ford, the aspiring gunslinger who wanted to be Jesse James but later agreed to kill him. And Dominik, who also wrote the film (adapting the novel by Robert Hansen), is highly uneven in the telling, as the narrative moves in fits and starts. When a co-worker asked my review of the film, I mentioned it was what would happen if Terrence Malick didn’t have the talent to match his ambition. It’s a smart-ass answer, but it unfortunately happens to be true here.
You have to say this for Neil Jordan – when he goes mad, he goes mad all the way. In 1999, he attempted to marry the serial killer genre with the fairy tale genre with In Dreams, and failed spectacularly. Now in his latest movie, The Brave One, he again tries to make a modern day fairy tale, this time within the vigilante drama. This time, I was going back and forth on the entire picture; every time I was about to dismiss it outright, something would come back to keep me interested. Usually, this was not the main storyline of Erica (Jodie Foster), the radio show talk host who, after surviving a vicious attack by thugs who killed her doctor fiancée (Naveen Andrews); while Foster internalizes everything to good effect, and is credible as a fighter, her story still falls back on some hoary clichés (like why would any sane person be in Central Park in that area that time of night?). No, the story that intrigued me was of Detective Mercer (Terrence Howard), who, while trying to track a killer of his own, gets involved with the murders Erica commits, and even becomes friends with her. Howard isn’t exactly playing a new character here – like Morgan Freeman in Seven, he’s someone who’s seen too much but is trying to make sense of it anyway. Howard speaks in his slow drawl, when trying to draw out a witness, asking a favor from his ex-wife (Zoe Kravitz), or talking with Erica, as if he’s thinking about what he really wants to say, and doesn’t trust himself otherwise. He provides a moral center to this film. And whatever you might think of Jordan’s view of the city, he and cinematographer Phillipe Rousselot do evoke both Erica and Mercer’s states of mind quite well. But the movie lost me in the last act with a climatic scene that totally goes off the rails. This being Neil Jordan, who rarely does anything half-ass, it’s not surprising that he’d aim high and miss, but without giving anything away, I find myself saying something unusual about a vigilante movie; I didn’t get pissed over moral failure, but plot failure.
Speaking of which, another honest to goodness failure, and a spectacular one at that, is Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur’s follow-up to his 1998 film Elizabeth. I generally don’t like sequels anyway, but rarely has a director fallen so far from his original movie to the sequel made from it. Kapur’s original followed Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) before she became “The Virgin Queen”, and the palace intrigue that threatened to remove her from the throne almost immediately after she took it. There, Kapur and writer Hossein Amini took what should have been just another costume drama and made a spy thriller out of it. This time, Kapur and writers Michael Hirst and William Nicholson try to keep the spy thriller part – outside forces, mostly Spain, are still trying to unseat the Protestant Elizabeth from the throne and put her sister Mary Stuart (Samantha Morton) on it – while also adding costume soap opera, in the form of Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), who comes to England from the colonies, and finds himself attracted to not only Elizabeth, but also her lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish). What could have been either a cogent drama or a fun romp becomes a ridiculous and incoherent mess. Kapur and cinematographer Remi Adefarasin abandon the dark look of the first film for the look of a typical colorful costume drama, and the result just makes everything look like a soap opera, and not a very entertaining one at that. Worse, the actors are forced to spew some particularly ripe dialogue (as when the Spanish king exclaims “England is ensnared in the devil!”), and good actors such as Blanchett, Owen, and Geoffrey Rush (reprising his turn as advisor Francis Walsingham) are left stranded. The only ones who make an impression are the ones who get to use silence, like Morton, who manages to be regal and fanatical, and Cornish, who made an impression on me for the first time, and manages to rise above the decidedly purple prose here. Shoot ‘Em Up was the worst movie I saw last year, but I walked out of that one; unfortunately, I stuck with this one all the way through, thinking it could only get better. It didn’t.
Sometimes, the most frustrating careers in Hollywood aren’t the hacks who are inexplicably allowed to keep directing, but the middling directors who hit excellence every once in a while and are fair to middling, or less than that, the rest of the time. Robert Benton falls into this latter category. The Late Show remains one of the better reworkings of the detective genre in the 1970’s, standing alongside such classics as Chinatown and Night Moves, and Nobody’s Fool is an incisive and richly detailed study of a small upstate New York town, and an overgrown boy of 60 who finally learns to take some responsibility. The rest of Benton’s career, at least as far as a director, is categorized by some okay films (Nadine, The Human Stain) and near misses (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart), with the occasional dud (Still of the Night). It’s hard to make even a bad film in Hollywood, let alone a good one, but you wonder what allowed Benton to strike lightning twice, and only twice. His latest middling effort is Feast of Love, taken from Charles Baxter’s novel. As with the novel, it’s meant to be somewhat of a romantic fantasia about several relationships at various ages (though presumably because romantic fantasy wouldn’t work as well in cold weather, the movie moves the novel’s Michigan setting to Portland, Oregon). The unluckiest in relationships by far is Bradley (Greg Kinnear), a coffee shop owner who is dumped by his first wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) for another woman, and then his second wife Diana (Radha Mitchell) for David (Billy Burke), the married man she’d been seeing. Somewhat luckier are Oscar (Toby Hemingway), who works at Bradley’s coffee shop, and Chloe (Alexa Davalos), with whom he meets cute at the shop (it’s the type of movie where she gets hired to work there right on the spot), but even they fall on tough times. Standing in observance of all of these couplings is Harry (Morgan Freeman), a retired college professor who lives with his wife Esther (Jane Alexander), and is lonely ever since the death of his son.
What made the novel work was Baxter’s nicely detailed portraits of each character, and his ability to ground his fantasia in reality. Benton, unfortunately, is a literalist, and he and writer Allison Burnett keep the skeleton of the plot without having any heft to it. Worse, the dialogue they come up with sounds stilted on screen. Benton is to be applauded for how matter of fact he is about the nudity (only Freeman and Alexander remain fully clothed of the main characters), but it’s the only magical element of the movie. Hemingway and Davalos may be pleasing to the eye, but their characters and performances have little depth. Likewise, Freeman and Alexander are always enjoyable to watch, but they are basically playing the same roles they always play, and it’s getting a bit tiresome. And while Kinnear and Blair are talents, they have nothing to work with here. Only Mitchell manages to triumph over the material. She always retains an air of mystery about her, and you always want to know what she’s thinking or feeling. That’s a quality Feast of Love could have used a lot more of.
The best new release coming out on DVD this week is Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris. Delpy wrote, directed and co-stars in the movie, and also cast her former boyfriend Adam Goldberg as her screen boyfriend, and her real life parents as her on-screen parents. And the film is very Woody Allen-esque – Marion (Delpy), a photographer, and Jack (Goldberg), an interior designer, are spending two days in Paris with Marion’s parents before they go back to New York, and while there, they keep running into all of Marion’s ex-boyfriends, most of whom remain on good terms with her – too good, according to Jack. As a director and writer, Delpy does have a tendency to let things run on too long – the scene where she berates the one ex she hates is a good example – but mostly, she runs things on an even keel, and never lets the jokes overplay the characters. It also helps that, unlike Allen nowadays, she knows how to make these characters talk believably. She’s also generous with her co-stars, and Goldberg, who can get stuck in shtick, responds well; though he’s basically “the ugly American,” he actually underplays here, and his double takes are as funny as his one-liners. And the abrasive nature of the film may be off-putting to some, but to me, it kept things from getting dull and staid. Most romantic comedies deal with the beginning of a relationship; rarely do we get one that starts at a comfortable (or complacent) middle. That alone lifts Delpy’s movie, despite the somewhat pat ending, above most of what passes for comedy these days.The two best re-releases this week both work the comedy/drama side of the street. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment may not be his best film – I reserve that honor for Some Like it Hot – but it’s his best melding of cynicism and sweetness. Wilder and collaborator I.A.L. Diamond deftly combine the twin tales of insurance agent C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), who lends his apartment out to co-workers for their sexual trysts, and his crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Lemmon, of course, is an old pro at combining comedy/drama. The real stars here are MacLaine, who gives an edge to her lovable pixie that she normally didn’t, and Fred McMurray as C.C.’s boss and Fran’s married boyfriend, who once again plays against type for Wilder as a snake in the grass. Also, the final line stands up with Wilder’s own “Well, nobody’s perfect” as the best ending line in movie history. Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie owes a big debt to Wilder not only in, like Some Like it Hot, in being a cross-dressing comedy – although here, Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) dresses up as a woman (Dorothy Michaels) not to save his life, but because he’s been out of work as an actor and needs a job desperately – but also in blending comedy and drama. Some carped then, and today, how Hoffman getting in touch with his inner woman grates today (Dennis Lim did just that in a recent article in the L.A. Times), but the film’s message, for the most part, is subservient to the comedy, and the comedy today remains as funny as ever. Pollack doesn’t miss the farcical elements of the picture – the scene where Michael finally reveals to everybody who Dorothy is remains one of the funniest scenes ever – but grounds them in reality, making them all the more funny. Having Hoffman, a troublemaking Method actor, playing a troublemaking Method actor doesn’t hurt either, but there’s also great support from Pollack himself (as Michael’s exasperated agent), Bill Murray (as his roommate), Teri Garr (as his girlfriend), and Jessica Lange (as Dorothy’s co-star).

New DVD releases January 29

2008-01-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

By now, everybody knows the story of The Invasion. By that, I don’t just mean the plot of the movie, which is familiar to anyone who has seen Don Siegel’s cult classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or Phil Kaufman’s hit remake of the 1970’s, or Abel Ferrara’s underrated 1993 shocker Body Snatchers, or Robert Rodriguez’s mediocre knock-off The Faculty (though whether it’s his fault or writer Kevin Williamson’s remains somewhat unclear). I mean how Warner Brothers was unhappy with Oliver Hirschbiegel’s version of the movie, and brought in the Wachowski brothers and director James McTeigue to make it more to their liking. The end result pleased neither critics nor audiences, but it really isn’t that bad. While the formula is tweaked with somewhat (instead of a alien clone of the person, the change comes from within), the basic hook of the story remains the same – something from space (this time caused by a space shuttle crash) lands on earth, and the result is people start saying things like “My husband is not my husband,” and before you know it, everyone except a few hardy souls are emotionless pod people. The hardy souls in this one include Carol (Nicole Kidman), a psychiatrist whose patient (Veronica Cartwright, who was in the Kaufman version as one of the hardy souls) is the first to wonder about her husband, Ben (Daniel Craig), a scientist who has a crush on her, and his colleague Dr. Galeano (Jeffrey Wright), who, of course, is the one to discover the correlation between sleep and the aliens taking over.
Both Siegel and Kaufman’s films relied not just on scares, but a sociological element (depending on your point of view, Siegel was skewing either Eisenhower conformity or feeding into Communist paranoia, while Kaufman took on the whole 70’s self-help movement) which made their films deeper and more frightening, while Ferrara and Rodriguez went for straightforward shocks (Ferrara did it successfully – Meg Tilly as a pod person is as creepy today as it was back in 1994 – Rodriguez less so). Hirschbiegel is going in the former direction – on the film’s most successful level, it suggests what the world would be life with a truly epidemic viral infection (the alien is passed along either by contact – Carol’s ex-husband Tucker (Jeremy Northam), a specialist with the CDC, touches a piece of the shuttle wreckage and becomes infected – or orally – he ends up spitting on Carol). There’s also a nifty, somewhat underdeveloped stab at having the pod people influence real events going on now (peace in the Middle East!), which is contrary to the thesis of the film, set down by Russian diplomat Yorish (Roger Rees), who seems to think we’re at our most human when we’re at our most destructive. And there are some creepy scenes, as when Carol manages to escape onto a subway train, and is warned by a passenger not to show emotion to fool everyone else.
The problem is the film seems to have been itself taken over by the pod people. I didn’t mind the brief flash forward scenes; to me, they added to the creepiness. And the happy ending isn’t entirely unexpected; after all, the only version to date that is able to go all the way with an unhappy ending is Kaufman’s version (even Siegel’s version had a tacked-on ending with the army ready to fight the aliens). But all of the previous versions, even the Rodriguez version, had a core of people we were meant to identify with, and were sad to see turn into clones. Kidman, Craig, and Wright are gifted actors, but they have nothing to work with, though Kidman gets to do the controlled panic she’s done before. It’s as if the studio sucked all the life out of them, and replaced it with the story of Carol wanting to protect her son Oliver (Jackson Bond), and while it makes sense plot-wise (because of a childhood disease, Oliver is immune from the alien), it seems like a very conventional resolution.
Joe Menendez’s Ladrón que Roba a Ladrón may be a knock-off of con/heist movies like Ocean’s 11 (the new version) and The Sting, but at least it’s a fairly entertaining knockoff. As usual, the con men here are merely trying to bilk a bad guy rather than an innocent, although in this case, the bad guy has been bilking the innocent. Mocte Valdez (Saul Lisazo) is a former thief who now bilks innocent Latinos, mostly illegals (the film is set in L.A.), with infomercials selling fake cure-all products. His former colleague Emilio (Miguel Varoni) wants revenge for that, although, of course, his rage is more personal. The twist here is, as his partner Alejandro (Fernando Colunga) explains, their normal crew won’t do it (they don’t accept Emilio wanting 50% of the cut on this deal), so they use illegals that aren’t thieves but are skilled at the positions they need. They include a mechanic (Ruben Garfias) and his daughter (Ivonne Montero), a construction worker (Gabriel Soto), and an actor (Oscar Torres) who can pretend to be a union official to organize the workers at Valdez’s complex (when he confesses he’s from SAG, the workers excitedly wonder if Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts will picket with them). Movies like this, of course, depend on how smoothly the plot runs, and surprising us at the end. On the latter front, Menendez disappoints somewhat – I guessed two of the major twists – but he does fine on the former. This isn’t as deep as, say, Nine Queens (another Spanish con movie, which had a more Mamet edge to it), but it’s fun.
Ever since seeing him as Michael Douglas’ obnoxious son in the deadly remake of The In-Laws, I’ve always dismissed Ryan Reynolds as the poor man’s Jason Lee. However, he has shown possibilities in talent lately; he was one of the few good parts of Smokin’ Aces, and he’s not bad in the lead role of John August’s The Nines. As he proved in his script for Go, August does like to play around with the story, and like that one, this movie actually has three stories in one: in the first Reynolds is Gary, an actor who is under house arrest after being drunk and disorderly, the second has him as Gavin, the creator of a TV show vying for a spot on the air, and in the last one, he’s Gabriel, a video game designer who may be controlling all of them. Hope Davis (a flirty neighbor in the first, a network exec in the second, and a jogger in the third) and Melissa McCarthy (Gary’s publicist in the first, the star of Gavin’s show in the second, and Gabriel’s wife in the third) appear in all three sections as well – in fact, all three stories revolve around Reynolds being torn between the two of them. After the intriguing set-up of the first segment, and the dead-on satire in the second (it’s shot as if it was a Project Greenlight-like documentary about the pilot), the film does falter in the third segment, and also becomes somewhat pretentious (what with language about “the creator”). However, it’s at least an entertaining mindbender, and well performed. I always thought McCarthy laid it on a bit thick as Sookie, the chef who was best friends with Lorelai Gilmore in TV’s Gilmore Girls, but she gets to combine her sweet nature with an edge here, and it gives her role some bite. And Davis, as usual, effortlessly shines – she’s rarely been as sexy as she is the first segment, and her performance in the second is on a par with Sigourney Weaver in the earlier film The TV Set. As for Reynolds, this is the first time I’ve had a sense of him paying attention to the other actors, instead of grandstanding. He develops actual chemistry with Davis and McCarthy, and has a presence without them as well.
This week’s major re-release is Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day. While it was a modest hit upon its initial release in 1993 (making about $70 million), it has since become a cult classic, and many consider this Bill Murray’s best performance until his turn in Rushmore five years later (Murray himself considers it and Rushmore as two of the best scripts he ever read). Somewhat surprisingly, and sadly, it’s also the last time frequent collaborators Murray and Ramis (Ramis wrote or co-wrote five films of Murray’s, and appeared in three of them) worked together on a film; they stopped speaking to each other after the film was wrapped. The film itself is a good example of the yin/yang working relationship the two had; Murray gave Ramis’ comedy an edge, while Ramis brought out Murray’s charm and sweetness (Wes Anderson, Murray’s latest collaborator, has drawn out his melancholy side, and filmmakers such as Sofia Coppola and Jim Jarmusch have followed suit). As Phil, the weatherman who reluctantly covers the Groundhog Day celebration and finds himself living the same day over and over, Murray uses his usual deadpan comic style to a deeper effect than in his previous movies with Ramis. Whereas his characters in, say, Stripes and the two Ghostbusters movies (to say nothing of Caddyshack) were overgrown boys, Phil is undoubtedly an adult, and is charming to no one who knows him very well (his “performance” as the weatherman is the only charm he has. As with Scrooged, this makes his redemption all the more touching, because Murray really works at it, rather than coasting on any sentimental feelings. And he has genuine chemistry with Andie MacDowell as the producer he falls in love with (it helps she tones down her mannerisms). When I first saw the movie in theaters, I thought the film became too pat and sentimental at the end (an admitted weakness of Ramis throughout his career), but as the quality of mainstream comedies has dimmed in recent years, that sweetness seems more earned all the time. This 15th anniversary edition features some new documentaries and deleted scenes.

Oscar nominations, and a final word on Heath Ledger

2008-01-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

Although there are several reasons why the Oscar nominations this year are not being greeted with the enthusiasm/derision as they usually are – the writer’s strike, the awards fatigue that always sets in, the fact there are few, if any, “audience-friendly” films among the major nominees, and, of course, the tragedy of Heath Ledger’s death – it’s still the Oscars, and, for me anyway, it’s still fun to put in my two cents, so here we go:

THE GOOD

Tommy Lee Jones: Let me preface by saying that I didn’t like In the Valley of Elah at all; whatever you think of the spate of Iraq-themed movies of the past few months (and to come), I think Elah was one of the more facile examples of that genre. However, Jones gave an honest performance in the movie, particularly because he wasn’t afraid to make the character unlikable.

Laura Linney: One of the knocks against the Oscar acting nominees is they traditionally involve some kind of gimmick. Whatever you think of the Best Actress nominees this year (and I’ll be debating the merits of one of them below), four of them undeniably have a gimmick aspect to them: Cate Blanchett was playing an historical figure, Julie Christie must deal with Alzheimer’s, Marion Cotillard was playing a drug addict and had to have a heavy makeup job to resemble her character, and Ellen Page was dealing with pregnancy. Linney’s character had no such afflictions – sure, her father was suffering dementia, but she was the caretaker, not the one suffering. And she did nothing obvious in her performance. She just played this character in an unsentimental way, again not making her likable, but making her believable and true. It’s not the type of acting that usually gets recognized, and for most of this awards season, she hasn’t been, so it’s nice to see Linney getting recognized here.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: I would have understood if Hoffman was ignored by the Oscars simply because the voters this year couldn’t choose which of his excellent performances deserved to be there. Was it his outwardly confident but inwardly sad and raging payroll manager whose robbery plan goes horribly wrong in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead? Or was it his concerned but self-involved literature professor forced to take care of his dad in The Savages? Personally, I think the voters got it right in choosing his performance as Gust Avrakotos, the CIA agent who helped Charlie Wilson run his war. From his first moment on screen (where he gets the classic line “Excuse me, what the fuck!”), he owns this movie.

Hal Holbrook: Yes, it’s a sentimental nod to a respected actor who’s never been nominated before. Yes, his character in Into the Wild can be seen as a cliché. But Holbrook never played his role as a cliché, and that’s what matters.

Amy Ryan: I’ve been a fan of Ryan’s ever since I saw her on TV’s The Wire, and I was afraid she’d be overshadowed by her more high-profile co-stars. She takes the stock role of the junkie mom and adds anger and vulnerability to the role.

Tilda Swinton: There have been plenty of corporate villains in films, but none like the one Swinton played in Michael Clayton. She may appear to be unruffled, but she’s really unsure of herself. And the decisions she makes in the film come less out of any cold-bloodedness on her part then on her need to please her boss. While Swinton at times struggles with her accent, that’s the only false step in an otherwise note-perfect performance.

Tamara Jenkins and Sarah Polley: Quite frankly, I was hoping one of these talented women would be nominated for Best Director, since they both did terrific jobs on that score. But I’m glad they both got a screenplay nod for taking different stylistic approaches to a similar theme – how we confront aging in this country, or more to the point, how we don’t confront it.

“Falling Slowly” – Shoot ‘Em Up, my least favorite movie of the year, could have been nominated for an Oscar, for all I cared, as long as the most transcendent song of the year got nominated. I was going to kick in my TV set if it didn’t.

No End in Sight: Once again, this was a fine year for documentaries, but this one was the best on all levels, technically and thematically. Without grandstanding, it made a clear case as to what’s happened to Iraq, and us, since we invaded them.

There Will be Blood: It goes without saying how I’m thrilled my favorite movie of the year garnered eight nominations, including Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Adapted Screenplay.

THE BAD

Atonement: It would be uncharitable for me to suggest this was nominated for Best Picture because it was a sop to those who only like tasteful literary adaptations, because I’ve liked many of the tasteful literary adaptations that have shown up in that category (The English Patient, for one, was my favorite movie of the year it won Best Picture). This film, however, had too much clanging symbolism (sometimes literally, like the typewriter keys) and show-off scenes (the war section, particularly that tracking shot) to be effective as a movie, let alone as an adaptation.

Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age: I think Cate Blanchett is the best actress to come to Hollywood in the last 10 years or so, and she fully deserved her nomination for playing Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. Her work in this movie is another story. Granted, it’s not entirely her fault; the movie itself is awful, and dragged other talented performers down in its wake besides her (Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, and Samantha Morton, to name a few). But she was melodramatic and unconvincing where she had been anything but in the first movie.

Casey Affleck: This year, we saw Affleck give a terrific performance that shows he can finally escape out of his brother’s shadow. I’m talking, of course, about his work in Gone Baby Gone. In the Jesse James movie, on the other hand, I know I’m in the minority on this, but I found him mannered and repetitive.

Dario Marianelli: Again, one of the main reasons why I didn’t like Atonement was that pounding typewriter, which was in perfect complement to the thudding score that hit us over the head with the theme of the film.

That’s who I think shouldn’t have been nominated. In part two, here’s who I think was unjustly ignored:

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: Granted, it had a small studio behind it, who couldn’t make sure Academy members actually saw the thing. But this was one of the great comeback stories of the year: 83 year old Sidney Lumet comes back after over a decade of either bad (Guilty as Sin) or worthy but flawed (Night Falls on Manhattan) films to make a dazzler that stands up with his best films (Prince of the City, Serpico), and both he and the film get ignored. At the least, he and writer Kelly Masterson should have been nominated.

Into the Wild: The speculation seems to be the poor showing this film had among the nominees was because of some kind of backlash against Sean Penn. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, it’s too bad. This was his most mature work as a writer/director, and his screenplay, at the least, should have been nominated. And granted, the Best Actor category is always a tough category to break into, and none of the nominees gave bad performances. But Emile Hirsch broke out of his usual teen roles to give a gutsy and compelling performance (which he lost weight for). Also, Catherine Keener provided a great balance to the movie with her sympathetic portrayal of a hippie who reaches out to Hirsch, and I wish she had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Zodiac: It’s being said now David Fincher’s film about the infamous serial killer got shut out of the Oscars because (1) it was released too early in the year, and (2) it had to compete with too many other dark-themed movies this year. That’s probably true, and too bad, because at the very least, Jim Vanderbilt should have been recognized for his script, Robert Downey Jr. for his work as the crime reporter who becomes spiritually broken while covering the case, and Harris Savides for his breathtaking cinematography.

Angelina Jolie: I’m sorry, but whatever you think of Jolie in real life, I think she disappeared into the role of Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart. There were no histrionics, no “Oscar-bait” scenes (a meaningless term anyway), just an honest portrayal of one woman trying, and failing, to rescue her husband.

Josh Brolin: Next to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, Brolin had the best year, performance wise, even if I didn’t always like the movies he did. At the very least, he should have garnered a Supporting Actor nomination for either his work in No Country for Old Men (or Best Actor, depending on what you think of his role), or his portrayal of the corrupt cop in American Gangster (which was the best performance in that overrated movie).

Leslie Mann: Whether you think Knocked Up was a funny and pointed film telling guys in their 20’s and 30’s to wake up and get over themselves or a wish fulfillment fantasy ignoring the reality of relationships and abortion, you can’t deny Mann lent this movie an edge in her portrayal of one half of a couple that has seen better days. Few scenes in movies were as compelling as the one where she gets turned away from a nightclub, and I think her work merited a Supporting Actress nomination.

Shélan O’Keefe: This was a terrific year for child actors, from Dillon Freasier in There Will Be Blood, to Edward Sanders in Sweeney Todd, and even Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, whose performance I did like. But none of them matched O’Keefe in playing a child who, through circumstance as well as temperament, becomes wiser, and sadder, beyond their years.

Jonny Greenwood and Eddie Vedder: Every time the Music Branch of the Academy takes a step forward (letting two rap songs win Best Song this decade, for instance), they take a step back, and disqualifying both Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood, which added to that picture’s dread, and Vedder’s songs for Into the Wild, which evoked Chris McCandless’ rebellious spirit, qualifies as a major step back.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days: Along with the Music Branch and the Documentary Branch, the Foreign Film Branch is the one that usually sits on its brains for a living. Last year, all but one of the nominees (Water) was at the very least a good and challenging movie. Granted, I haven’t seen any of this years nominees yet, but I find it a little hard to believe any of them could be better than Cristian Mingiu’s harrowing tale of trying to get an abortion in communist Romania.

I was going to make a blog entry devoted to Heath Ledger, but there’s a lot said already. I will not speculate in any way on his death, or what may have led to it. I will add my voice to those who say a potentially fine career was sadly cut short. Whatever you thought of 10 Things I Hate About You, he actually underplayed his role as the bad boy, making him all the more charming and watchable. And he proved he was willing to jump towards more challenging roles in The Patriot, despite being saddled with a silly romance plot in that movie. He seemed adrift in the next few years after that in his starring roles (A Knight’s Tale), only able to get a chance to show his stuff in supporting roles in films like Monster’s Ball and Lords of Dogtown (where again, he was able to underplay to nice comic effect). Of course, he broke through in a big way in Brokeback Mountain as someone who repressed feelings he didn’t quite understand as if his life depended on it. Finally, while Cate Blanchett has deservedly gotten most of the praise for I’m Not There, next to her, Ledger is the best thing about it, capturing Bob Dylan’s moody charisma. He will be missed.

New DVD releases January 8

2008-01-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

For actors who have a larger-than-life, or at least highly extroverted, persona, there’s always a danger that when they have to play a regular guy, they flatten themselves out and become one-dimensional. Sam Rockwell doesn’t have that problem in playing Brad, one half of the yuppie couple in George Ratliff’s horror/thriller Joshua. Rockwell has toned down the hipster persona that’s served him in movies like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy just enough to fit the contours of the movie. Brad is a Wall Street trader, and Rockwell’s air of confidence fits that part of him well. Even better, though, are Brad’s scenes with his family, whether it’s with his wife Abby (Vera Farmiga), trying to convince her everything will be alright with their new baby, or with his son Joshua (Jacob Korgan), being the dad who thinks everything seems cool. But when Brad’s façade cracks, as when he discovers his dog is dead, Rockwell doesn’t sentimentalize his grief either, but plays it openly. It shows Rockwell has a lot more to give if he wants.
Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weak link to Joshua is, well, Joshua himself. Many critics thought the film went off the rails when the first half, portraying how the marriage of Brad and Abby slowly becomes undone, descended to the cheap horror stunt of the two of them discovering while their baby girl may keep them up nights, it’s Joshua they need to be worried about. But the real problem is the way Korgan plays the role. I’m perfectly willing to believe this is Ratliff’s fault, but the fact is, after five minutes with Joshua, any one in their right minds would have called the child psychologists pronto (Brad may be self-absorbed, and Abby is obviously pitched to hysteria, but they’re not stupid). I had some problems with the recent horror film The Orphanage, but at least that kid acted like a believable kid. Korgan is fine when he’s playing the piano (and admittedly, when he plays “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” at his school talent show, that was quite creepy), but it all becomes stupid pretty quickly. Oh, and the religious fanatic mother-in-law (Celia Weston) was obvious as well. Yes, the first half, dealing with the disintegration of the marriage, was tense and compelling, and while Farmiga was definitely channeling Robin Wright, she does pull it off. And Dallas Roberts has some nice moments as Abby’s brother. But overall, the movie only serves to prove indie horror films can be just as wrongheaded as the big studio ones.
Near the beginning of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, Dr. Searle (Cliff Curtis), the doctor/psychiatrist on the spaceship Icarus II, is sitting in the observation room, looking at the sun from their (relatively close) vantage point, and wanting to just drink the experience in. That scene perfectly distills the essence of Boyle’s films; he wants the viewer to see the movie not as a story to watch, but as a mood piece to groove on. The problem is, more often than not, Boyle’s mood pieces only go so far before they run out of gas (exceptions being Trainspotting and 28 Days Later), and so it is with Sunshine.
Reuniting with writer Alex Garland (who wrote 28 Days Later, as well as the novel that The Beach was based on), Boyle continues his genre hopping (he’s done, among other things, a yuppie thriller (Shallow Grave), a romantic comedy (A Life Less Ordinary), and even a kids movie (Millions) with his attempt at science fiction. Icarus II is being sent to the sun to somehow re-ignite it and put an end to the chill that has descended over Earth. Besides Dr. Searle, the other astronauts include Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy), the nuclear scientist (they intend to explode a nuclear bomb inside the sun), Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), the botanist (she grows the garden on the ship that provides oxygen), Trey (Benedict Wong), the navigator, and Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), the captain. Boyle and Garland basically sketch in these characters; they’re more interested not just in the ship, but the mission, or rather, the enormity of it. It’s not just the fact that they’re trying to save the earth, Boyle and Garland seem to be saying, but the fact that they’re trying to restart the source of all life. The scenes of characters just staring at the sun may not move the plot forward in any discernible way, but they make you feel what the characters are feeling, and that’s no mean feat.
The problem comes for Icarus II when it picks up a distress beacon from Icarus I, the first ship that tried this mission, which failed for an inexplicable reason. And that, regrettably, is when the movie starts to go off the rails. Boyle’s balancing act of Kubrick and Solaris (the Tarkovsky version) turns into an Event Horizon retread (which was itself a retread of other, better films), as a villain character is introduced, and things start to go haywire. Did the studio pressure Boyle and Garland into this plot turn that becomes predictable and annoying? Or is it another example of Boyle not being able to end his stories right? Whatever the reason, it’s still disappointing. You can’t really blame the actors; all of them are reasonable enough as scientists and astronauts, and no one tries to steal the movie from the other. Still, Sunshine, like Boyle’s other films, seems to burn out too quickly.
The original version of 3:10 to Yuma, by director Delmer Dawes, adapted from the short story by Elmore Leonard, featured some subtle filmmaking and not-so-subtle acting. This remake by James Mangold is the opposite. For the most part, Mangold sticks pretty close to the original story – Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a poor farmer, agrees to be part of the posse that escorts notorious outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the train station so he can be sent to a federal judge, but Evans and the others must not only contend with Wade’s gang, led in his absence by the psychotic Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), but also Wade’s attempts to psych out Evans. At nearly two hours long, Mangold’s version is about 25 minutes longer than the original, features a sequence involving Luke Wilson as an outlaw that seems unnecessary (though admittedly, Wilson is surprisingly good playing a villainous character), and psychological baggage that spells out everything for the viewer (Evans wanting to prove himself to his son, and having physical and psychological wounds to overcome). Finally, I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending feels like a compromise between Leonard’s and Dawes.
Mangold does handle all of the gunplay and violent passages well, but his best work comes with the performances. As Wade in the original, Glenn Ford certainly brought the requisite charm, but he lacked the appropriate menace. Crowe has that menace down pat, but he never overplays it, nor does he overdo the charm. And the scene where he seduces a barmaid (Vinessa Shaw) is quite sexy. Like Crowe here, Bale is not exactly stretching himself with this part – Evans fits in maybe a little too well with his recent parts of silent conviction (most notably, of course, Bruce Wayne). But the way Bale internalizes the conflict he feels between doing what he thinks is right (taking Wade to the train station) and maybe doing right by his family (taking Wade’s money and letting him go), which is much better than Van Heflin, an actor I like, merely indicating that conflict in every gesture. As for the rest, Peter Fonda lends his usual dignity to the role of Byron, the Pinkerton man who has been tracking Wade for a long time, and Alan Tudyk brings humor to his role as the doctor who comes along (Gretchen Mol, unfortunately, is wasted as Evans’ wife). But Foster tops them all, channeling Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death, and playing Charlie as someone who, for all his psychotic nature, has a little-boy need for approval from Wade. 3:10 to Yuma was hailed by some upon release as reinvigorating the Western. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is a solid example of the form.
The re-issue this week that’s getting the most play is the 50th anniversary release of Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember, but there are better, less heralded re-releases to get excited about. If she’s remembered at all today, Sondra Locke is most likely thought of as the bitterly estranged ex-girlfriend of Clint Eastwood. But she was a good actress when she got the right role, and her very first film, Robert Ellis Miller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, adapted very well by Thomas Ryan from the Carson McCullers novel, gave her a good one. She plays Mick, a teenage girl right on the brink of womanhood, and while it’s a potentially clichéd role, Locke never makes a false step. Whether affecting airs at a party she’s thrown because she thinks it’s what she’s supposed to do, squabbling with her parents (as per normal in these kinds of stories, her father (Biff McGuire) wants to give her everything, but from Mick’s point of view, her mother (Laurinda Barrett) always stops him), or her reaction after losing her virginity to her boyfriend, Locke seems entirely natural.
As anyone who’s seen the movie or read the book recalls, Mick is only one major part of the story. The other crucial role is of Singer (Alan Arkin), the deaf mute who moves into the small Southern town where Mick and a host of others reside. Singer, an engraver at a jewelry store, has come to this town to be close to Spiros (Chuck McCann), his closest friend and another deaf mute, who is also mentally challenged. Singer finds himself interacting not only with Mick (he rents out a room in her house), but also Blount (Stacy Keach), a drunk radical, Dr. Copeland (Percy Rodriguez), a bitter black man who counts Singer as his first white friend, and Portia (Cicely Tyson), Copeland’s estranged daughter. The idea of an afflicted person bringing people together like this, of course, has potential to be a mawkish and unbearable story, but neither Miller nor Arkin overdo this. Arkin, in fact, gives the most restrained performance of his career, keeping things simple and direct. Even in the one scene where his inability to speak drives him to frustration, as when he’s trying to get Portia to come with him to her father, he resists the urge to sentimentalize Singer. Miller likewise avoids the usual trap of Southern movies, which is to make everything garish. It could be argued he goes a little too far in that direction, making the film seem too episodic. And, of course, fans of the novel will miss Biff, the owner of the bar/café Blount and Singer hang out in, and Blount’s radicalism is toned down for the movie (though Keach lends his role authority). But those are minor quibbles; The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is quietly affecting and moving.
Another movie dealing with a young woman’s awakening is Robert Towne’s Personal Best. Although it was a box-office failure, this tale of two track stars training for the 1980 Olympics did cause quite a stir when it came out because it involved a lesbian relationship between Chris (Mariel Hemingway) and Tory (Patrice Donnelly), those two athletes, and because Chris later breaks up with Tory and becomes involved with Denny (Kenny Moore, a track writer and former runner; he later appeared in Towne’s Tequila Sunrise and co-wrote Without Limits with Towne, another great movie about track and field), an Olympic swimmer. For the latter, Towne makes no moral judgment in having Chris go from Tory to Denny; it just happens. As for the former, Towne doesn’t descend to the made-for-TV theatrics that mar even John Sayles’ otherwise fine film about a lesbian relationship, Lianna, but presents it in an honest and direct matter. And he gets an erotic charge out of the material (watch the arm-wrestling scene between Chris and Tory) without becoming a voyeur. Also refreshing is how the other characters react to it; Terry (Scott Glenn), Chris’ coach, doesn’t worry that two of his athletes are involved, or that they’re both women, he worries Tory may be acting needy to distract Chris from her abilities.
Just as important as the way Towne handles the relationships, however, is the way he handles the track background. Movies about athletes tend to overlook the training and the ability, as if “heart” was all you needed to win. Towne doesn’t make that mistake, concentrating on how Tory, Chris and the others prepare for meets, and how they worry about whether their bodies are up to the strain (this extends to how the athletes behave off the track as well – the scene of the women in the locker room is done without a hint of voyeurism, as is the scene where Denny is peeing in the bathroom and Chris wanders in. It’s all natural and unaffected). And while I tend to think of Towne for his great dialogue, he mostly tells the story through images (though Terry does get off a zinger when he complains about what he has to put up with coaching women; “Does Chuck Noll worry that Franco Harris is going to cry because Terry Bradshaw won’t talk to him?”). Also, the performances are first-rate. Moore and Donnelly are non-actors, yet they seem born for the camera. Glenn, of course, has the crusty but kindhearted part down pat. But Hemingway is the one who drives this movie. Chris starts out being awkward both physically and emotionally (after the first race, she throws up), yet at the end of the movie, she’s the one who’s strong, and Hemingway takes you through that journey without a false step.

The Best And Worst of 2007

2008-01-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

I’m not one of those people who thinks 2007 has been an exceptional year for movies – there were too many films that were either disappointing (In the Valley of Elah, Lust, Caution) or ones that were good but, considering their directors, could have been better (Eastern Promises, Rescue Dawn). Nevertheless, there were a lot of very good movies, if only one that I’d call an out-and-out masterpiece. Here, then, is my top 10 list for the year, along with my honorable mentions, my favorite performances of the year, and the five films that were the worst I saw in 2007:

There Will Be Blood: Whatever you think of him as a filmmaker, there’s no denying Paul Thomas Anderson is a director who wears his storytelling ambitions on his sleeve. While his previous epic tales (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) looked inward to his own feelings about the world and human relations, his latest film, loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil, looks outward to the familiar tale of a man (Daniel Day-Lewis, in another mesmerizing performance) who reaches the top of his profession but becomes isolated from himself. What Anderson does is combines the epic reach of his tale with the intimate details of his characters in a way few other directors have. The result is the one true masterpiece I saw this year.
Black Book: I know there are people who’d rather eat holiday fruitcake every day for a year than watch another WWII-related movie. But in his comeback movie, Paul Verhoeven destroys all of our preconceptions about the “last good war.” There were definitely good guys vs. bad guys, but as Verhoeven vividly demonstrates in this tale of Dutch Jews fighting against the Nazis, the lines between them weren’t always as clear as we’d like them to be.
Michael Clayton: Making his directorial debut, writer Tony Gilroy makes the rare thriller/drama that didn’t feel like it came of a machine marked Thriller 101, that gave its characters and dialogue space to breathe, and exuded intelligence from every frame without being heavy-handed about it. And while George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson have deservedly been getting credit for playing two corporate sharks that belatedly see the light, it’s Tilda Swinton who deserves the most kudos playing a corporate villain like we’ve never seen.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: Sidney Lumet comes roaring back to prominence and relevance by taking one of his favorite movie genres – the New York City crime melodrama – and, despite the fractured narrative, making it simple, tough-minded, and heartbreaking, especially in the last 15 minutes. It helps he has great actors at the helm, particularly my nomination for this year’s acting MVP, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
No Country for Old Men: Part of the backlash against this latest effort from the Coen brothers is how this movie is all formalism. That may be true, but when the formalism in question – sharp writing, tight direction, nail-biting suspense even without a score to juice things up, and pitch-perfect performances from the cast, especially the chilling Javier Bardem – is so acutely done, it’s hard for me to complain.
(tie) Away From Her/The Savages: Both of these films are from women directors tackling issues normally dealt with in disease-of-the-week TV movies with an honesty normally not found in those efforts. Both of them feature strong performances not only by the afflicted – Julie Christie in the former, Philip Bosco in the latter – but also by those dealing with the affliction – Gordon Pinsent in the former, Laura Linney (in the lead performance of the year) and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the latter. And while they have different styles in telling their story – the former’s gentle lyricism contrasts with the latter’s brutal humor – they’re both damn good.
Once: Since Moulin Rouge kicked off the “musical revival,” most of the films in its wake – even the good ones like Chicago and Sweeney Todd – have merely copied the old stage-to-screen musicals of the 50’s and 60’s, being as concerned with the surface than the feeling below, if not more. John Carney’s film doesn’t resonate because of its smallness of scale compared to those other musicals, but because it produces more genuine feeling not just in its story, but also in the very music driving the story.
No End in Sight: What makes Charles Ferguson’s documentary about what went wrong in Iraq so compelling and heartbreaking isn’t just the calm outrage that fills every frame, but the idea that the people who were initially in charge and knew what they were doing were set aside for the people who got us in this mess today.
Zodiac: What made David Fincher’s docudrama about the infamous serial killer was not the level of detail he, writer Jim Vanderbilt, and a top-notch cast (especially Robert Downey Jr.) brought to the story, although that certainly helped. It was also the rare serial killer movie – hell, the rare movie – that dared to explore how our obsession with serial killers, from any perspective, has been less about understanding the monster beneath than fetishizing the details of their workings.
Into the Wild: In his acting, writing and directing, Sean Penn has usually hewed to the position of the outcast staying on the edge of society. What makes this movie, based on the true story of Chris McCandless, so appealing is not just that Penn’s work here is his clearest declaration of that position, but also because for the first time, he tempers that position with the mature outlook that maybe parts of that society may be more help than hindrance – and McCandless came to that outlook to late to save himself. And Emile Hirsch’s performance as McCandless clearly shows him as a talent to watch.

Honorable mention:

The Bourne Ultimatum: Paul Greengrass, Tony Gilroy, Matt Damon and company prove once again you can make a blockbuster into a good movie if you know how to do it right.
I’m Not There: Although it didn’t hit me on the emotional level I think it aspired to, Todd Haynes’ fractured biopic of Bob Dylan is still an impressive achievement.
Juno: I’ll leave the debate over how “indie” this comedy is to those who care about such things, and say simply this comedy both made me laugh and moved me, an increasingly difficult thing to do these days (and earns points for getting Jennifer Garner to act).
A Mighty Heart: Whatever you think of Angelina Jolie’s real-life activities, she didn’t grandstand here, but gave a quietly powerful performance in Michael Winterbottom’s first-rate docudrama.
The Namesake: Forget Atonement; this was the class literary adaptation of the year. And with this, A Mighty Heart, and his small role in The Darjeeling Limited, Irfan Khan proves he’s a talent to watch.

Best performances of the year:

Best Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah. As usual, this category is overflowing with contenders, including Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will be Blood), Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild). But while I didn't like the movie he was in, Jones' performance haunted me from beginning to end.
Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages. In contrast - or was it reaction - to last year's abundance of great roles for women and great performances by them, there weren't as many lead actress performances to cheer about (though Julie Christie (Away From Her), Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart), Ellen Page (Juno), and Halle Berry (Things we Lost in the Fire), among others, shone through). But even in a better year for women, Linney, who also had an MVP year with great performances in Breach and Jindabyne, gave her character the most dimensions, and made us care about her even when we didn't like her all that much.
Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War. It's almost unfair picking Hoffman's best performance from his work this year. But in this performance, Hoffman disappeared into his character completely, more so than in his other admittedly stellar work this year. And even though this was another good year for supporting males (including Josh Brolin in American Gangster, Ed Harris in Gone Baby Gone, Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton, and Irfan Khan in The Namesake and A Mighty Heart), Hoffman stood out.
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton. Cate Blanchett got all the ink for her Bob Dylan impression in I'm Not There. Amy Ryan has been winning all the awards for her crack-addicted mom in Gone Baby Gone. Leslie Mann did the comedy with an edge like no one else in Knocked Up. And Shelan O'Keefe topped a strong year of child performances with her heartbreaking work in Grace is Gone. But all of these, and other great supporting actress performances, were giving archetypical, though very good, performances; Swinton took a familiar part - the corporate villain - and turned upside down all our conceptions about it.

And now, the five worst movies of the year:

Shoot ‘Em Up: The only movie I walked out of this year was this so-called tongue-in-cheek action comedy, which insisted it was clever and funny instead of being offensive and tiresome. And it’s sad Clive Owen, who was in my in my favorite movie of last year (Children of Men), was in my two least favorites of this year, this and:
Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Let' see: Shrek the Third? Live Free or Die Hard? Pirates of the Caribbean 3? No contest: this was by far the worst sequel of the year. Director Shekhar Kapur goes from the entertaining and artful potboiler of the first movie to an incoherent mess, dragging a talented cast (including returning members Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush) down with him.
Smokin’ Aces: Once you get past the novelty of R&B star Alicia Keyes playing a lesbian hitwoman, there’s really no point to this empty-headed action fest. Also, memo to Jeremy Piven – stop playing every part as a variation on Ari Gold.
Angel-A: Luc Besson’s incredibly annoying “romantic fable” puts you in the uncomfortable position of wondering if La Femme Nikita or The Professional were ever that good in the first place.
The Heartbreak Kid: Granted, I’m coming to this conclusion later than many other critics, but here goes; Ben Stiller has effectively killed off his career unless he drops his shtick and stops making painfully unfunny comedies like this woeful remake of Elaine May’s sharp comedy.

New DVD releases December 18

2007-12-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

At the end of The Commitments, we see a montage set to the band’s cover of “Try a Little Tenderness,” where we see what the members of the band have been doing since they split up. The very first shot in the montage is of Jimmy (Robert Arkins), the band’s manager, listening to Outspan (Glen Hansard), the guitarist, and Derek (Ken McClusky), the bassist, as they perform on a busy Dublin street corner. The opening of John Carney’s Once finds Hansard, 16 years older but still hale and hearty, performing by himself on a Dublin street corner, and while it’s two different movies, it’s easy to imagine Hansard’s character merely being Outspan later in life. Certainly, in addition to being musicals set in Ireland, both movies are about the depth of feeling music can produce in us, and they’re both small treasures because of that.
Hansard, whose character is simply known as “Guy” (as in not the name), is playing one night when he’s approached by a woman (Marketa Irglova), simply known as “Girl”, who likes what she hears (even though she only gives him ten pence). As it happens, she’s also a musician – she plays piano, and she practices at a music store (the owner lets her). The two play together enough to know they’ve got something connecting them on a musical level. But does that connection exist elsewhere? After all, he’s got an ex-girlfriend living in London whom he still pines for, and her husband is back in the Czech Republic (she went ahead to try and make enough money for him to move to Dublin), while she lives with her mother and child. Does it matter the two of them may have feelings for each other, as expressed through the music?
What makes this all magical is those feelings are expressed through the music, and thrillingly. I still recall the chill I felt – in a good way – when Hansard and Irglova first performed “Falling Slowly,” the first song they perform together, in the movie – it simply and beautifully captures those feelings. Carney sets all the songs up simply – except for “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy,” which Hansard performs on a bus in response to the question of why his girlfriend left him, everything is done with a naturalistic feel. The two main characters are similarly grounded – he works as a vacuum salesman, while she works a variety of jobs, including selling roses. Both of them, in other words, have a practical life, and let loose only in their songs.
You could argue this is a new Brief Encounter for the millennium (except the two never consummate their relationship, as they did in the earlier film), or that she’s merely his muse, but I think it’s a lot more than that, and that has to do with the music. Hansard (who, along with Carney, is in the band the Frames) and Irglova also do a good job acting out the non-music parts. But the songs are where the real emotion comes from (the opening line of “Falling Slowly” is “I don’t know you but I want you”), and Carney captures the emotion of the songs without sentimentalizing it, as do Hansard and Irglova. It’s the music that makes Once so special.
My senior year in college, I was without a TV, and was concentrating more on the girl I was in love with, and the history thesis I had to write. All of which is to say I missed being part of the audience for The Simpsons when they started their march to being the most popular cartoon, and sitcom, in TV history. I respect the writing, and have liked some of the eps I’ve seen, but it’s not part of my vocabulary the way, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was. All of which is to say I was able to enjoy David Silverman’s The Simpsons Movie for what it was, and not how it stacked up against the TV show. True, most of the supporting characters get little screen time (including my personal favorite, Mr. Burns). True, the movie feels like one half-hour ep stretched out to feature length (even at 87 minutes, this feels a tad long). And true, the environmental message, while undoubtedly sincere, does tend to blunt the satire the show is famous for. However, the movie in some ways sums up the basic appeal of the show – the family. The show’s fans have always seen Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa as representative of the American family, for better or worse, and that certainly comes out in this movie. The plot may involve things usually seen in an action or sci-fi movie – pollution in the lake causes the town of Springfield to be closed down, and EPA head Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks, who’s one of the few celebrity voices here – the others being Green Day and Tom Hanks, as themselves) convinces President Schwarzenegger to blow up the town – but it all comes out of the basic actions of the Simpson family. As in almost every episode, Homer does something stupid but eventually comes around, Marge is impatient but loving with him, Lisa has a crusade, and Bart wishes Homer wasn’t his dad (this part is, admittedly, over the top). The beginning of the movie has the family watching an Itchy and Scratchy movie, and Homer declaring they’ve been gypped by paying for a movie from a TV show when they could just watch the show for free. The Simpsons Movie never achieves greatness, but you won’t feel gypped either.
Ever since the Lord of the Rings franchise, studios have been turning out fantasy films of their own, hoping to reproduce some of that magic, box office and otherwise. Some have come close (the first Narnia movie), but most have fallen short. Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust, though it has some good parts, falls in the latter category. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, this starts out well – in 19th century England, Tristan (Charlie Cox), a goodhearted but clumsy lad, wants to win the love of Victoria (Sienna Miller), the callow beauty of the village. One night, they’re out together, and they spot a falling star going towards the kingdom of Stormhold, outside the village (which is protected by a huge wall). Tristan declares he’ll go and retrieve the star for Victoria, and this will prove his love. What he doesn’t count on is the star is actually a girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes). What Tristan also doesn’t count on is he’s not the only one after the star – Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), a witch, wants to cut out Yvaine’s heart because it will give her eternal youth, and the sons of the king (Peter O’Toole) want the stone Yvaine is carrying, because whoever gets it will be the next king. One more thing Tristan doesn’t count on is falling in love with Yvaine.
Until Tristan goes through the wall into Stormhold, this is actually pretty good – Vaughn sustains a fairy tale atmosphere that’s appealing. Once he crosses over, however, there are problems. For starters, the attempts at humor are hit and miss at best. Robert De Niro, for one, is way too cartoonish in his portrayal of Captain Shakespeare, a pirate who pretends to be tough but is really swishy (and that’s a tired conceit anyway). He does have one good moment, when he’s dancing along to a can-can number, but that’s about it. And the business about the sons of the king who appear as ghosts after they’ve died is another joke that gets tired. Ricky Gervais does brighten things up in his brief scene as a trader. Vaughn does better by the fairy tale side, especially with Pfeiffer playing another great villain character after Hairspray. He and his Layer Cake cinematographer Ben Davis also avoid the paint-by-numbers look of that film with some lyrical shots, especially when Yvaine is lighting up (her light burns brightest when she’s feeling good, as when she’s falling in love with Tristan). But the story is choppily told – I’ve never read the novel, but I wonder if scenes involving the unicorn and the dream where Tristan is warned about Yvaine being in trouble were better handled than they are in the movie. And then there’s Danes. She certainly looks aglow when she’s in love, but there’s something about her that seems too modern for a fairy tale like this, and at the beginning, when she and Cox (who’s adequate, nothing more) are squabbling, she comes off as pouty. One wonders if this would have soared if Miller had played the lead instead. Stardust could have used a little more.
When Blade Runner, the adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep, flopped upon its initial release in 1982, few could have predicted people would still be talking about it 25 years later. After all, most critics thought director Ridley Scott and writers Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples (with an uncredited assist from Roland Kibbee) had made a muddled mess of Dick’s novel (Pauline Kael admitted the movie couldn’t be ignored, but complained it “gives you the feeling of not getting anywhere”). As for audiences, those who were hoping for another light-hearted Harrison Ford adventure like the first two Star Wars films and Raiders of the Lost Ark were bewildered by the storyline and turned off by Ford’s monotonous voiceover narration. However, it did gain a cult following, thanks to the stunning visuals and blending of science fiction and film noir. Then in 1989, a different version of the film was discovered, shown in some theaters, and was eventually released to theaters and video to great acclaim in 1992. This version eliminated the voiceover, shortened some scenes, and had a different ending and meaning, and was the so-called director’s cut. Now, Scott has redone the film once again for his final director’s cut.
For those who don’t know the story, a brief summary is in order. In 2019 L.A., man has the ability to create replicants, or androids that can pass for humans. However, after a bloody battle between replicants and humans, all replicants have been outlawed, and humans hunt them down to destroy them. Deckard (Ford), a former “blade runner” (detectives who hunt down replicants), is called out of retirement to hunt down a group of replicants, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who have stolen a ship and are looking for their creator. Meanwhile, Deckard finds himself falling for Rachael (Sean Young), who turns out to be a replicant. In the original cut, that’s as far as it went, but in the director’s cut, Scott changed it to imply Deckard maybe was a replicant as well.
Scott has never been really a director of ideas (after all, Kingdom of Heaven is about the Crusades yet eliminates almost all religious discussion from the war), but this film, in any version, is an interesting meditation on what it means to be human. True, Batty is certainly villainous, but Deckard’s superior (M. Emmet Walsh) and co-worker (Edward James Olmos) are just as ruthless, if not more so. And even in the original version, we saw Deckard being cut off from life, whereas the replicants, whose life span was only four years and whose memories were all imprints, seemed to embrace life, and acted out of self-defense. Making Deckard a replicant adds a further twist to that. And the noir-ish world Scott and production designer Lawrence G. Paull create further add to the sense that life for mankind is empty. Finally, all the performances are good; while this was never one of Ford’s favorites, he brings toughness and vulnerability to Deckard, Young is bewitching as Rachael, and Hauer is charismatic and ruthless as Batty while remaining sympathetic. There’s also good work from Daryl Hannah and Joanna Cassidy as other replicants. The new special edition DVD contains both earlier versions, plus a new “director’s cut,” which is basically a tweaking of the 1992 version (which Scott claimed wasn’t his cut, even though it was closer to his vision). Whatever version you see, Blade Runner is still worth watching.

New DVD releases December 11

2007-12-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

I haven’t, and won’t, see High School Musical 2 (five minutes of the first one was enough to turn me off), but the other two franchise pictures coming out on DVD are really good, as is the big indie film of the week.
One of the primary components of American action movies is the hero – or, in the rare case, heroine – always knows who they are, and more importantly, what they are. They may have doubts whether or not they’ll succeed, and may regret things they didn’t do, but that’s almost always momentary – they, and we, are sure of their eventual triumph. This is one of the many ways the Bourne movies have been different from most every other Hollywood action movie. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) knows he’s a killer, but he doesn’t know who he is – just that he doesn’t want to be a killer anymore. Also, his enemies aren’t the outside threats (except as hired guns), but the people who trained him, and made him, in the first place. And unlike most Hollywood action movies, this franchise has made every bullet and punch count. Hard to believe that films of this caliber could be made from novels (by Robert Ludlum) that were convoluted to the point of annoyance, but there you go. And Damon and writer Tony Gilroy, two of the constants of the series, are joined once again by Paul Greengrass, who directed The Bourne Supremacy, for the third chapter, The Bourne Ultimatum, and it’s the best of the series.
In this installment, Bourne, still haunted by the death of his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente), is in hiding until Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), a crusading British journalist, gets a tip from an inside source that Bourne was the key to a CIA operation called Blackbriar. Bourne figures this is another key to finding out who he is, so he decides to track down Ross. What he doesn’t count on is CIA Deputy Director Noah Vossen (David Strathairn), who wants to keep a lid on Blackbriar. Vossen and his superior, CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn), want to put Bourne into the ground, while Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) thinks that will just make Bourne angry with the CIA.
Once again, Greengrass shoots this film as if it was a documentary, with lots of handheld cameras, which has caused griping as well as praise. I think the hand-held cameras lend the movie an immediacy, putting you right into the action, and making it come off more realistic. Also, it adds to the mission of making every bullet and punch count. And while there are some spectacular action scenes, including a chase scene inside a railway station and a chase across rooftops, Greengrass doesn’t forget the human factor – the most heart-stopping moment of the movie is when Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) reappears (she works for the inside source) out of nowhere (it also does the movie credit there’s no flashback explaining how she knows Bourne). And as I mentioned before, the self-doubt Bourne feels adds a layer of emotional resonance not seen in most action movies. A lot of credit, of course, goes to Damon, who is not only realistic in the action scenes, but shows the turmoil of being Jason Bourne.
The reason why J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have resonated with so many people is not just the way she tells the stories (although she’s a great storyteller), or the minutiae she packs in (although both the Muggle and Wizard worlds that she’s created are nicely detailed), but the way each character, particularly the main ones, continues to grow as the series progresses. To me, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the best of the books (though the final chapter, Deathly Hollows, runs a very close second) precisely because it does so well the emotional journey Harry and her friends take. While director David Yates and writer Michael Goldenberg (stepping in for Steven Kloves, who wrote the first four movies) have to trim the book (the longest of the series, if memory serves), they keep that emotional journey, and that’s why the movie is, next to Prisoner of Azkaban, the best of the series to date.
In the previous installment, Goblet of Fire, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) returned to power, but the Ministry of Magic, led by Cornelius Fudge (Robert hardy), refuses to believe it, and won’t hear any talk of Voldemort. So Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), once considered the hero of Hogwarts, is now a pariah, especially since The Daily Prophet is running stories against him. He’s even brought up on charges for using magic outside the school (he was trying to protect himself and his cousin Dudley (Harry Melling) from Dementors). Only a last-minute intervention by Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) prevents Harry from being expelled. To keep Harry and Dumbledore in line, the Ministry appoints Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, and she appoints herself as watchdog of Hogwarts, coming off as a sadistic Mary Poppins. Among the many changes she brings to the school is banning any teaching of defense methods against the Dark Arts. So Harry, under the prodding of Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), starts his own class, which will prepare the other students against Voldemort. Among the others are Ron’s sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) and brothers Fred (James Phelps) and George (Oliver Phelps), new student Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), and, of course, Cho Chang (Katie Leung), the girl Harry has a crush on, and the girlfriend of the student Voldemort killed in the previous story. At the same time, Harry is tortured by his own connection with Voldemort; he sees things through Voldemort’s eyes, and even sees harm coming to others through him, including, possibly, his godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman).
Yates, best known in this country for the made-for-HBO movie The Girl in the Café, doesn’t seem to have the background for the special effects called for in the movie, but he handles them fine, especially the climatic fight Harry and his friends have with Voldemort’s followers, the Death Eaters (including Sirius’ cousin Bellatrix (Helena Bonham Carter)). More importantly, he handles the relationships with aplomb, for the most part. The only relationship that comes off wrong is between Harry and Cho – they have no chemistry together. But Lynch is superb as Luna (she apparently wrote the producers she was born to play the part, and it shows), the slightly off-center girl who nevertheless is a staunch ally, and Staunton is simply terrifying as Umbridge (though I wish she had done more of the thought-clearing interruptions that made her so memorable in the book). Where the movie falters is with the supporting cast from the previous films – for the most part, they barely register here, except for Snape (Alan Rickman), who here tries, and fails, to teach Harry to close his mind against Voldemort, and Sirius, who feels left out. I understand the movie wanted to focus on the main people of the story, but the supporting cast adds detail to the story that seems missing here. Also, while the climax ends in tragedy, the movie still feels the need to tack on a somewhat happy ending, where a lesson is learned. Still, none of that is enough to negate the fact that I really enjoyed this film, and look forward to what Yates will do with the next installment, The Half-Blood Prince.
Before director Theo Van Gogh was murdered in 2004, he had been planning to shoot English-language remakes of this first three feature films. Upon his death, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro and Stanley Tucci have stepped in to direct them. Buscemi’s effort, Interview, which he also co-wrote (with David Schechter, adapting the original screenplay by Theodor Holman) and stars in, is the first out of the gate. It’s the tale of a night-long interview between Katya (Sienna Miller), an actress best known for her tabloid antics than her talent, and Pierre (Buscemi), a political journalist who’s been assigned to this interview for reasons that only become clear later. I can already hear people groaning at this concept, and it’s true this comes off as little more than an acting exercise, with as much insight. However, it’s a very entertaining exercise, because Buscemi and Miller go at each other with ardor and skill. For Buscemi, of course, this is no surprise – he’s been one of our most reliable character actors for almost 20 years now. Miller, however, is a find here. I still haven’t seen Factory Girl, which left most people cold (although she, and the film, have a few defenders) – matter of fact, the only film of hers I’ve seen is Layer Cake, where she had such an inconsequential part that she made no impression on me whatsoever. I don’t know if having her own tabloid nightmares fueled her performance here, but she shows herself as both thick-skinned and vulnerable, with a level of intelligence that’s not apparent right away. Movie critics aren’t supposed to like remakes of foreign films, but on the basis of this, I look forward to Tucci and Turturro’s efforts.
This week’s major Criterion release is Monte Hellman’s cult road movie Two-Lane Blacktop, one of many road movies to come out in the late 60’s and early 70’s. It may be heresy to say this, but I don’t think it holds up very well. Minimalism is one thing, but either Hellman’s characters are completely one-note, the actors are directed poorly (except for Harry Dean Stanton in a small role as a hitchhiker, and Warren Oates as GTO, a race car driver), or they’re actually that wooden. James Taylor (as the Driver) and Dennis Wilson (as the Mechanic) are fine musicians, but they have zero screen presence, and the plot (about a cross-country race between them and GTO) is so burdened with metaphor it barely registers. The car racing scenes are fine, but as far as road movies of the early 70’s go, I still prefer Vanishing Point.

New DVD releases December 4

2007-12-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

Greg Mottola’s Superbad is about a subject we’ve seen thousands of times before – two teens trying to lose their virginity. What’s more, while Mottola and writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Rogen also appears with Bill Hader as a pair of boorish cops) do capture the friendship between main characters Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), they just don’t make it funny enough. Or maybe I’m turning into a crank about humor as I get older (always possible). Still, I really didn’t laugh that often, not even at newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fogell, whose fake ID is “McLovin” (gettit?). I’ve never seen Mottola’s The Daytrippers, and I hope that was less obvious than this.
After I saw John Turturro’s directorial debut, Mac, I came across a quote from a critic who said it was “obviously a labor of love, but often a labor to sit through.” That’s a very smartass review, of course, but unfortunately, it rang true. I thought of that line when I watched Ethan Hawke’s The Hottest State, which he adapted from his own novel, directed, and also appears in. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale about William (Mark Webber), an aspiring actor who comes to New York City, and his relationship with Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno), an aspiring singer/guitarist. I’ve liked the two in other movies (Moreno especially in her Oscar-nominated turn in Maria Full of Grace). Hawke has also lined up some good performers in supporting roles, like Laura Linney as William’s mother, Sonia Braga as Sarah’s mother (the scene with William, Sarah and her mom is especially good), and Michelle Williams as an older woman William gets involved with. There’s just one problem – Hawke can’t write dialogue to save his life (except in scenes like the one mentioned above). Therefore, the two main characters, who ideally should be appealing, come off as whiny and self-absorbed. Plus, Moreno must join the list of foreign actors who are uncomfortable with English – or, at least, expressing any emotions in English that have to do with anger (even when she’s upset, she comes off as perky). And Webber is directed to do little but be insufferable – you wonder how two women, let alone one, could throw themselves at him. Hawke can be a talented actor (and he’s also sharp here as William’s father, seen in flashbacks), but as a writer and director, he makes this mostly a labor to sit through.
Two box set tributes to great directors arrive this week. One of them is merely a repackaged deal – four of Ingmar Bergman’s best-known films have been re-released in a Criterion set (The Seventh Seal, Smiles on a Summer Night, The Virgin Spring, and Wild Strawberries), and while I’m not a big fan of Smiles, the other three are essential viewing for anyone who wants to know what Bergman was all about. The other box set is part repackaged, part discovery. One of John Ford’s most frequent studio collaborators – aside from Republic Pictures, where he made masterpieces like Stagecoach and The Quiet Man – was 20th Century Fox. It’s where he made some of his best-known and acclaimed movies like The Grapes of Wrath, Young Mr. Lincoln (which no less than Eisenstein called his favorite John Ford film), and How Green was my Valley), as well as The Iron Horse, the silent film about the building of the Union Pacific Railroad that put Ford on the Map, and even a Shirley Temple movie, Wee Willie Winkie, considered by most to be one of Temple’s best. All of those and more are included in the giant box set Ford at Fox, along with a new documentary on Ford. For those who can’t shell out the $300 bucks for the set, Fox is also releasing some of the movies individually (like The Iron Horse, which includes both the U.S. and European versions of the film), and in smaller, six film sets divided up into the classics, silent films, comedies (including films he made with popular comedian Will Rogers), and the rarities. One of those rarities is Up the River, a 1930 prison comedy featuring the film debut of Spencer Tracy, and the one-time only teaming of Tracy and his lifelong friend Humphrey Bogart, in only his second film (having not developed his gangster persona yet, Bogart was playing a nice-guy role). I haven’t seen most of these, and I’m not a fan of some of the ones I have seen (like Valley or Drums Along the Mohawk, his Revolutionary War film), but it’s nice to see a studio committing itself like this to arguably the best American director of all time.
Finally, while the release of the sixth season of 24 is, of course, big news to TV aficionados, even those who thought the season was lacking somewhat, I’d like to promote the release of the fourth season of The Wire. HBO’s cop drama doesn’t get the viewer or awards attention that other shows like The Sopranos or Six Feet Under received, but critics and a loyal fan based (myself included) consider it the best show on television right now. Creators David Simon (a former reporter) and Ed Burns (not the actor, but a cop turned teacher) are after nothing less but a portrayal of how America’s cities are being laid waste to by drugs, corrupt systems and indifference on every level of bureaucracy, and how a small group of people try to fight that system and indifference even though they may know the outcome. Season 4, which I haven’t seen yet, focuses on the school system, as four eighth graders struggle to make through a school system that doesn’t care about them (except for a few dedicated teachers like Prez (Jim True-Frost), formerly a detective) and a drug trade that beckons. Meanwhile, Marlo (Jamie Hector) continues to solidify his position as the leading drug dealer of the area, and Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) runs for mayor. Personally, after watching the first three seasons, I can’t wait to watch this one, and I'll be very sorry when it finally goes off the air next year.

New DVD releases November 27

2007-11-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

At one point in Mark Fergus’ First Snow, one character tells another his future depends on which road he takes. One senses this is the line Fergus and co-writer Hawk Ostby (they both co-wrote the low-budget thriller Consequence, and were two of the writers of Children of Men) kept in mind when they were writing this movie. The plot sounds like it could come out of Bad Thrillers 101. Jimmy (Guy Pearce) is a flooring salesman who dreams of selling vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes, and has a good relationship with his girlfriend Deirdre (Piper Perabo). One day on his route, his car breaks down. While waiting to get it fixed, he decides to kill time by going to see Vacaro (J.K. Simmons), a psychic. Of course, Jimmy doesn’t believe a word he says, but gets freaked out when Vacaro stops the session all of a sudden, tells him to leave, and even refunds the money. Then his predictions, innocuous as they seem (Vacaro tells Jimmy which way to bet on a game) come true, and Jimmy comes back demanding to know what else will happen. At this point, Vacaro reveals Jimmy’s life will be fine – until the first snow of the year, at which point he’ll die.
From the plot description, you might guess one of those overblown horror movies a la The Reaping, where everything is spelled out and special effects replace suspense. Instead, Fergus relies on old-fashioned suspense and character development. For starters, instead of being played as creepy (and as anyone who’s seen Oz knows, Simmons knows from creepy), Vacaro is reluctant to talk about his gift, and about what it means. For another, the film takes a different turn as Jimmy starts getting phone calls that hang up when he picks up, and even a shooting target in the mail. Is it Andy (Rick Gonzalez), the sales associate he fired? Or is it Vincent (Shea Whigham), who knows a guilty secret from Jimmy’s past? Fergus also deals with questions not pondered usually in American films, like whether or not man can control his own fate. At times, Fergus is almost too low key in his direction, and he and cinematographer Eric Allan Edwards sometimes overdo the dark photography. Still, they keep us hanging onto Jimmy’s fate. It helps, of course, that Pearce is quite good at playing the scoundrel in Jimmy while keeping us rooting for him. And after this and The Prestige, it looks like Perabo is growing out of bad family movies like Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel.
At the beginning of Mira Nair’s The Namesake, a young Indian woman is about to enter the living room to see her parents and to meet the man she is soon to marry by arrangement. Before she does, she sees the man’s shoes, which are American sneakers. She pauses, and tries the sneakers on. She smiles a little, takes the sneakers off, and goes to join her family and her soon-to-be husband in the living room. That’s the type of detail that made Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel so readable, and Nair often has that quality in her best films (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding). She shows it off in this film as well, one of the year’s best so far.
The woman, Ashima (Tabu, unknown here but a Bollywood star), and the man, Ashoke (Irfan Khan), do get married and head to America. The first third of the film shows the couple trying to adjust to life in New York. Ashoke gets a job as a professor, while Ashima tries to acclimate herself to the neighborhood. Ashima soon has a boy, and they give him the name of Gogol, because when Ashoke was on a train as a boy one time, a relative praised the Russian authors, Gogol in particular. As a young boy, Gogol prefers that name instead of his first name, Nikil, but when he becomes a teen (and is played by Kal Penn, of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle fame), he sees the name as an albatross. The rest of the movie shows Nikil learning not only what his name means to him, but also what his heritage means to him and others. Unlike a filmmaker like Gurinder Chadha, Nair doesn't lecture us or sentimentalize her characters, nor does she create caricatures. Even Max (Jacinda Barrett), the white woman Gogol briefly gets involved with, is treated well. Jean Renoir once said the tragedy of life is that everybody has their reasons, and while Nair isn't quite on Renoir's level yet, it's that spirit that informs her movie, especially in the performances. Penn and Tabu both step out of more glamorous roles to do fine work here, but it's the slow and steady Khan who holds it all together. He just received a well-deserved Independent Spirit Award nomination for the movie, and I hope it leads to bigger things here.
The tagline for Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, at least in this country, was “This is your brain on anime,” and while it’s somewhat reductive, it’s also a true statement about this brilliant (albeit sometimes baffling) film. Brad Bird (The Incredibles) has said it makes him upset when people refer to animation as a genre rather than a style (or art form), and I’m sure Kon would agree; in some senses, this is a film noir/corporate thriller that happens to be done in anime (of course, the freaky dream sequences could probably only happen in animation). The plot turns on an invention called the DC Mini, which allows scientists, led by Dr. Atsuko Chiba (voiced by Megumi Hayashibara), to enter their patients’ dreams and help them. Turns out a few of the minis have been stolen, and whoever has stolen them is using them to drive people mad through their dreams. Also in the mix is Toshimi Konakawa (Akio Ohtsuka), a detective haunted by dreams of chasing a man through a variety of movie-like adventures, and being helped by a vivacious young woman named Paprika – who happens to be the avatar of Chiba (Hayashibara provides her voice as well). Although it’s pretty easy to figure out who the ultimate bad guy is, the plot turns aren’t always so apparent (what Konakawa ultimately has to do with the case, for example). But Kon, who adapted a graphic novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, captures us with eye-popping visuals that parody and celebrate old movie conventions (the detective claims he never watches movies). And although there are typical anime conventions like the electronic music, this is in no way a kids film (there’s some sexual scenes in this).
When Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress finally came to theaters, of course the subtext of every review was how sad Shelly was murdered before she could see it released. The movie itself is sweet without being cloying. Much of that has to do with the terrific cast Shelly assembled for the movie. Keri Russell finds the right kind balance as Jenna, a waitress at a restaurant who is pregnant by abusive husband (Jeremy Sisto), and whose only joy in life is the pies she makes (which she gives titles like “Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie,” which contains oatmeal and fruitcake, “flambé of course”). And Nathan Fillion has great chemistry with her as Dr. Pomatter, Jenna’s gynecologist and eventual lover, as well as his usual great comic timing (he describes his neighborhood as great “if you like trees…and who doesn’t like trees?”). There’s also fine supporting turns from Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Shelly herself as Jenna’s co-workers, and even Andy Griffith does nice work as Joe, the somewhat crotchety owner of the restaurant, whom Jenna serves every day. As a writer/director, Shelly sometimes struggles with the tone – although Jenna’s co-workers are her best friends, the dialogue there sometimes sounds like it could have been written on a greeting card. But mostly, Shelly manages to keep this from getting treacly, and there are some inspired scenes, like the montage scene of Jenna’s smile after she sleeps with Dr. Pomatter for the first time. It makes you sad once again about the talent of Shelly’s that will remain unfulfilled.
This week’s major Criterion release is Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel. Like last week’s Criterion release of Sawdust and Tinsel, this is an early work by a legendary director that’s as important for what it foretold in his career as it is for the movie itself. This marked Kurosawa’s first film with Toshiro Mifune, one of the most enduring partnerships in film history (they made 16 films altogether, from Drunken Angel in 1948 to Red Beard in 1965). In his biography of the two of them, The Emperor and the Wolf, Stuart Galbraith called Mifune the instrument through which Kurosawa best told his films, and that’s readily apparent even here. Mifune plays a gangster who forces an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura, another frequent collaborator with Kurosawa, making 22 films with him) to treat him for TB. Although this is ostensibly a crime picture (Mifune is in conflict with his boss, who’s in prison), Kurosawa is also interested in how the postwar environment is affecting Japan, and, of course, in the nature of mankind. It’s a little too heavy-handed (Kurosawa and Mifune didn’t completely hit their stride together until Stray Dog, their follow-up), but it’s still quite effective, thanks to the performances of the two leads. Mifune, possibly the greatest physical actor of all time, is commanding as the gangster, while also unafraid to show his weak side, while Shimura underplays nicely as the doctor.

New DVD releases November 20

2007-11-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

John Waters' original Hairspray was not only a tribute to the music of his youth, but also a sly satire of the teen exploitation movies of the time. Adam Shenkman's Hairspray, based not only on the movie but the Broadway musical version of it, falls short on both counts, even though it's done with bright energy and features a good performance. The plot is close to the original: Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) wants to get on the Corny Collins Show, and must battle the evil Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer) to do not only that, but to also intergrate it. The problem on the first count is the same problem plaguing the movie version of Dreamgirls - namely, the music sounds more like generic show tunes than a pastiche of the popular music at the time (with the exception of the two numbers Queen Latifah rips through). It's not bad, just not memorable. As for the latter, Waters' film already walked a tight line between parody and playing it straight, and Shenkman is too earnest for parody (admittedly, Waters has caught up with the culture he once mocked). The performers certainly try, but like John Travolta, who tries to avoid camp by stepping in the role originally played by Divine as Tracy's mother, they come off as too gee-whiz for the material (even Christopher Walken). Only Pfeiffer seems in on the joke - though she's more obvious than Debbie Harry was in the original, she gives an actual performance, and certainly seems glad to be in a musical again. This bears the distinction of having the stars from Grease (Travolta) and Grease 2 (Pfeiffer), and unfortunately, it represents those films more than Waters' original.
I still haven’t seen Werner Herzog’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, so I saw Rescue Dawn, Herzog’s fictional version of that story, with fresh eyes. As with the documentary, this tells the tale of Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a U.S. Army pilot shot down during the Vietnam War while flying over Laos. The rest of the movie details how Dieter planned to escape the North Vietnamese who had captured them, though, of course, the real prison was the jungle. This, of course, is old territory for Herzog - man's struggle against nature. And while Klaus Kinski, Herzog's frequent collaborator (and sparring partner), is no more, Herzog has found actors as equally obsessive (Bale) and odd (Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn are, respectively, odd and haunting as fellow POWs) for the movie. And while Herzog was criticized in some quarters for treating the Vietnamese as Stallone and Chuck Norris did in their Vietnam films, this isn't the rah-rah movie those were; Herzog keeps things grounded in the details. Maybe it's a little too grounded; I admired the movie while watching it, but it didn't grab me emotionally. Still, it's definitely the best of the brand new movies of the week.
Since the commercial failure of his last directorial effort, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Luc Besson has stuck to writing and/or producing such films as Transporter (and its sequel), Unleashed, and High Tension. Being a fan of Besson's earlier films, as well as one of the few who thought The Messenger was an honorable failure rather than a disgrace, I was looking forward to Angel-A, his latest. Unfortunately, it's only serves as proof whatever talent Besson once had seems to have slipped away. The story has possibilities - Andre (Jamel Debbouze), a hapless con artist pursued by the many bad guys he owes money to, helps a young woman he calls "Angela" (Rie Rasmussen), who in turn tries to help him, even as he wonders if she's real, or otherwordly. I don't mind the fact that it's sentimental, I mind the fact both characters are irritating as hell. I liked Debbouze in both Amelie and Days of Glory, but quite frankly, I was rooting for the mobsters to finish him off here; he comes off as grating and one-note. And while Rasmussen is pretty in a placid sort of way, she's hardly more endearing. Instead of her being a porcelain doll, Besson goes the other way, making her foul-mouthed (there is sort of a reason why, which we learn later), but again, it's too one-note. Besson once made entertaining films about distinctly odd couples, like La Femme Nikita and The Professional, but he seems to be stuck in retread mode.
After Sylvester Stallone revived Rocky Balboa for one more film, who could blame Bruce Willis for giving John McClane another go? From a financial point of view, anyway, I guess. From an artistic point of view, Live Free or Die Hard is, well, just another sequel. True, there's an attempt to bring the franchise up to date - the director (Len Wiseman) is best known for the Underworld movies, McClane's sidekick this time is a young computer hacker named Matt (Justin Long, best known for being in a series of Apple commercials), and the villain, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), is basically hacking into the computers that control things like our transport systems, money system, etc., to show how vulnerable we are after 9/11 (a name like Gabriel only shows the movie's lack of subtlety on this point). A few other things have changed - for one, unlike the first two movies, the main law enforcement officer (Cliff Curtis), after initial impatience, is only too happy to pair up with McClane, and also, McClane is older and less resilient, which the movie treats as both a badge of honor and a joke. It also is quick to do what many other sequels do, namely reference its predecessor (there's even an FBI agent named Johnson here). Unfortunately, while Wiseman tones down the CGI madness that made the Underworld movies unbearable, gets a good performance out of Long, and a servicable cameo from Kevin Smith as another computer geek, this still seems unnecessary and desperate, and the attempts to connect it to the real world are part of the problem. It also doesn't help that while Olyphant can be a good actor, he is not a good action villain (Maggie Q, who plays his sidekick/girlfriend, would have been a much better choice). Willis does tone down the wiseass attitude he used in the first three films, instead treating the whole thing as a sly joke that he allows us to get, but he also has foregone the vulnerability of the first film. It's not even worth it to hear him say "Yippekayay" one more time.
This week’s big Criterion film is Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel. Made before he made his international reputation with Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal, this story of a how a relationship between a ringmaster and his mistress, a horse rider, is tested when they visit a small town and partner up with an acting troupe plays like an interesting warm up to his more famous films. As John Simon points out in a perceptive essay included in the movie booklet, this was one of Bergman's first movies - and one of the first major European movies - to use humiliation in this way in a dramatic context. It also marked Bergman's first collaboration with the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and shows an early interest in experimenting with light (a flashback involving the tale of a circus clown and his wife is deliberately overexposed, and one wonders if Gordon Willis screened this film before working on the Godfather films). If the characters are a little too broad (especially the actor who has an affair with the mistress), they are also more full of life than Bergman detractors, who only see gloom, would have you expect. And while this may not have begun his lifelong attraction in movies for performers of all kinds, it plays as a good example of it. Criterion will be re-releasing four of Bergman's major films (included with the two I already mentioned are Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring), but this is worth a look as well.

New DVD releases November 13

2007-11-13T22:32:00.000-08:00

When I first saw the trailer to Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, I groaned. People complain when Oliver Stone or Spike Lee present their own view of history, but they at least are alive to the contradictions of it (well, most of the time). Why isn’t there the same kind of outcry when movies wrap history up in a too-neat package, particularly when dealing with racial history, as if to say, “Yes, it was bad then, but don’t worry, it’s all better now” (and yes, Jerry Bruckheimer (Remember the Titans, Glory Road), I’m looking at you)? I thought this story of William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), the British lord who, in the late 18th century, pushed to end slavery in Britain, would fall into the same trap. Well, it does and it doesn’t.
Part of what makes the movie push past the usual clichés, including Wilberforce’s romance with Barbara (Romola Garai), an activist who grew up idolizing Wilberforce, and the stilted dialogue, is how writer Steven Knight does capture how the slavery issue was wrapped up in other issues as well as bigotry. Not only did proponents argue slavery had a positive effect on the economy, they also saw it as a way to keep up with France. Also, the backhanded way Wilberforce and his supporters finally managed to pass an anti-slavery law (they banned any merchant ship from flying an American flag, which most slave-trading ships flew) is well handled. Finally, there are a group of actors who make the most of their roles (I’m afraid I found Gruffudd merely functional, along with singer Yossou N’Dour as a former slave). Rufus Sewell, who has mostly being going over the top in villain roles, and rather badly at that, is quite restrained as Thomas Clarkson, an abolitionist who also sees slavery as just one of the ills plaguing British society. Benedict Cumberbatch is likewise restrained and quite good as William Pitt, who became Prime Minister and tried to help Wilberforce. But three old pros take the acting honors here: Bill Paterson as Lord Dundas, who opposed abolition for pragmatic reasons even though he was against slavery, Michael Gambon in his usual wily turn as Lord Charles Fox, who changed from anti-abolition to pro-abolition, and Albert Finney brings gravitas to his performance as John Newton, the former slave ship owner who repented and wrote the song that gives the movie its title. Still, as movies about slaves go, I still think Amistad does a more complex job in its story.
I know almost nothing about Edith Piaf, even though her music has been used in several movies that I like (two quick examples; Audrey Hepburn sings “La Vie en Rose” as Humphrey Bogart is driving her home in the original Sabrina, and Susan Sarandon uses her music in her first night in bed with Tim Robbins in Bull Durham), so I have no way of knowing if Olivier Dahan’s La Vie En Rose, his biopic of Piaf, is accurate. What I can say, unfortunately, is it doesn’t linger in the memory. Certainly, Dahan doesn’t approach this like a traditional biopic; he shifts back and forth between when Piaf was getting sicker (too much alcohol and drug abuse catching up to her), and her early life on the streets until she was discovered and made a star. And he and cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata make this darker than the usual biopic (apparently, Piaf preferred being in the dark most of the time), and move the camera around a lot. But Dahan doesn’t really connect to the material to make it inspiring for us. There are some good moments here and there, as when Piaf (Marion Cotillard) meets Marlene Dietrich (Caroline Sihol), and it turns out Dietrich is a fan, and when Piaf finds out Marcel (Jean-Pierre Martins), the boxer who was the great love of her life, is dead, but they’re isolated from the rest of the movie. Mostly, for all the technique on display, it just feels like a standard biopic. Cotillard has been getting praise for her performance as Piaf, and she certainly captures the shyness, as well as Piaf’s often diva-like behavior. But no one else is allowed to make much of an impression. Even Gerard Depardieu, normally a strong presence in any film, doesn’t get much to do as the nightclub owner who gave Piaf her first big break. I still appreciate Piaf’s music after watching La Vie En Rose, but I don’t feel anything beyond that.
Steven Soderbergh apparently thought he was in a career rut in 1995 when he made The Underneath, which I always thought was his most underrated film. This so-called rut led him to break away from what he thought was his formula for making movies, first with the wildly experimental, and funny, Schizopolis, followed by his concert film Gray’s Anatomy (not to be confused with the TV show, of course, but rather a recording of Spalding Gray), and then his first major studio film, Out of Sight. Soderbergh has always been one of my favorite filmmakers, but in my opinion, he’s in a rut now. After the first Oceans film, which was a terrific entertainment, he’s directed six features (plus a segment from Eros, an anthology film featuring him, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Wong Kar-Wei, which I haven’t seen), two of them Oceans sequels, and only one of which I’ve liked (his underrated remake of Solaris). The fact that his experimental films (Full Frontal, Bubble, The Good German) haven’t quite worked is disappointing, but not dispiriting; at least he’s trying to stretch himself. The problem is those Oceans films. I understand he’s trying to make enough money so he and former producing partner George Clooney can make the films they want to make, but the problem is, both Oceans Twelve and Oceans Thirteen, the latest one, feel like they were made just for the money and nothing else.
The nominal plot of Thirteen is the gang gets together one more time when Willy Bank (Al Pacino), an oily casino owner, squeezes Reuben (Elliot Gould) out of ownership, which leads him to have a heart attack. The rest of the gang decide the best way to get even is to sabotage Bank’s opening of his casino, mainly by having the house lose on every game in the casino. Except for Ellen Barkin as Bank’s field boss, this is strictly a boys club (Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones are alluded to but don’t appear here), and it has the feel of boys not wanting to grow up. It’s not to say this film is irritating. Everyone here knows how to go through their paces, and Clooney, Pitt and Damon et al clearly enjoy each other’s company and the chance to play shady characters. But no one really gets a chance to do much with their roles, not even Pacino. As with most sequels, this clearly comes off as a cash register job. A lot of people hated Oceans Twelve for being too smug and having too many inside jokes, but this enervated, if harmless, movie, comes off as being more smug. Soderbergh is following up with two film biopics of controversial revolutionary Che Guevara. I hope those films allow him to get his groove back.
For whatever reason, Paris has always held a certain romance for storytellers, be it novelists, playwrights, or filmmakers. In Paris, Je T’Aime, twenty-one filmmakers were asked to make a short film set in Paris and about Paris in some way (Emmanuel Benbihy directed the transitions between some of them). Being this is an anthology film, the stories in each of the short films necessarily become less important than the mood they set. Fortunately, most of the segments, aside from being quick, are quite diverting. Of the films, I was most taken with the Coen Brothers’ segment, where Steve Buscemi plays a tourist who learns only too well what not to do in a Parisian subway, Vincenzo Natali’s segment about a young man (Elijah Wood) attacked by a vampire, which is surprisingly romantic, Walter Salles’ wrenching segment about a nanny (Catalina Sandino Moreno) traveling from taking care of her boss’ baby to taking care of her baby, Gerard Depardieu’s bittersweet segment about a couple (frequent co-stars Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands) meeting for the last time to finalize their divorce, and Alexander Payne’s segment (Payne also appears as Oscar Wilde in Wes Craven’s segment about a quarreling couple (Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell)), about an American tourist (Margo Martindale) visiting Paris. It starts off as if Payne is making a smug declaration about American tourists, but it turns into something much deeper. On the whole, this collection is light on its feet, but if like me, you’ve never been there, it still communicates the romance of the city.
Although Shane Meadows’ This is England starts and ends with news footage of what England was like under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, and clearly is meant to show how her government helped create a culture that enabled skinhead groups to flourish, this isn’t a tract. Rather, it’s Meadows’ semi-autobiographical look at how a young boy named Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), who is perpetually picked on and who has a chip on his shoulder about his short stature and his father (who died in the Falklands War), falls under the influence of a group of skinheads. I’ve never seen Meadows’ previous movies (which include Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and A Room for Romeo Brass), but he has a reputation for making films that are sharp in detail and character but rambling and sentimental when it comes to plot. That certainly applies to this film (although the sentiment is toned down), and as far as skinhead films go, it’s certainly no patch on Romper Stomper (the best film about that particular cycle of hate), but it avoids the self-importance of American History X and the like. Turgoose, a non-actor, has the raw defiance of someone forced to grow up too soon, but he also shows a surprising vulnerability, especially in scenes with his mother (Jo Hartley) and his girlfriend Smell (Rosamund Hanson). And as Combo, the charismatic and dangerous leader of the skinheads, Stephen Graham (best known as Jason Statham’s partner in Snatch) is both charismatic and dangerous, as well as being more complicated than he first appears.
This week’s top reissue is Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, his rarely screened debut film that finally garnered a modest theatrical release this year after mostly being seen at festivals and underground screenings. Burnett is one of the few filmmakers today, let alone African-American filmmakers, who can’t be put inside any sort of box, and this film, which basically follows the lives of one family in Watts as they struggle day to day, is a good example of his method. Rather than being a plotted film, this is more a mosaic of how lower-class people struggle to live their lives, yet still maintain a certain dignity. Burnett photographed the movie as well, and while this was a student film, he gets lyrical images that would shame veteran filmmakers, and his score (the main reason the film went underground for so long was his difficulty obtaining music rights), ranging from Dinah Washington to Earth, Wind and Fire, is a perfect complement to the film. The DVD comes with a collection of some of Burnett’s short films as well.

New DVD Releases November 6

2007-11-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

Michael Moore and Pixar are both in the spotlight of this week’s DVD releases, along with one of the most underrated movies of the 1980’s, and yet another example of a director passing on his talent to his offspring.
As everyone else has mentioned, Moore’s Sicko goes after a system almost everyone agrees is broken, and that’s our healthcare system. It’s not just the 50 million who don't have insurance who are screwed, Moore argues, but also most of the 250 million who do. As someone who has had many unwanted bills because of my health problems (ulcer, shoulder pain), I certainly feel the sadness and outrage Moore wants us to feel when he shows stories of people who have run aground of health care in this country (although he does allow for some gallows humor in the tale of a man who was only able to get treatment for his deaf daughter by dropping Moore’s name). It’s not just the big sob stories, like the woman whose baby died because her insurance policy wouldn’t cover her at the closest hospital to her, or the former health care worker who remorsefully tells of the claims she had to deny simply because it was better business. It’s also the simple tales of the couple who had to move into their daughter’s house because they couldn’t afford their medical bills anymore, or the janitor well past the retirement age who must work just to get insurance. And though his approach is somewhat simplistic (HMO’s may have started under Nixon, but our fear of “socialized” medicine came long before that, as did big business controlling government), he does a good job outlining what’s wrong here and why.
The problem, as always, is when Moore looks to other countries as an example of what the U.S. should be doing. It’s certainly true Britain, Canada and France, three of the leading Western nations, have universal health care and, for the most part, are better off for it. And Moore includes parts of an interview with Tony Benn, a retired British MP, of how universal health care is essential to a democracy. But Moore’s utopian view of health care in these countries doesn’t entirely wash. Again, having lived in Canada for 11 years, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) without being examined. At least when the doctors here said I had an ulcer, they had examined me thoroughly. Also, he fails to mention in Britain how the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher actually tried to roll back universal health care, until Tony Blair partially restored it. And then there’ his notorious Cuba trip, where he takes injured 9/11 rescue workers (not insured because they were volunteers) to Guantanamo Bay to get the same treatment as political prisoners. Moore finds the Cuban doctors are more than happy to treat them, and it never seems to occur to him how they might be staging this for his benefit (and while Moore is right to say the U.S. has overblown Cuba as a menace, he fails to mention how many people they’ve jailed for being gay or for speaking out against the government). Once again, Moore’s message is perfectly sound, but his methods often aren’t.
Those methods are the subject of Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk’s documentary Manufacturing Dissent. Unlike such hateful works as Fahrenhype 9/11 and Michael Moore Hates America, which come from the “Love it or leave it” school of political debate, this comes from filmmakers who agree with much of what Moore says (Melnyk especially is moved by Moore’s denouncing of the media’s behavior towards the administration after 9/11) but not how he says it. As the film follows Moore on his tour promoting his film Fahrenheit 9/11, the filmmakers cover his career before his breakout hit Roger & Me, such as his brief turn as an editor at Mother Jones (he said he was dismissed because of a dispute over a story, while his colleagues insist he wasn’t that good), and examine his career, mainly that movie and Bowling for Columbine, questioning not only the veracity of his information (including the oft-repeated charge that Moore actually did interview Roger Smith for his film, but chose not to include it), but also, again, his methods (John Pierson, who produced Roger & Me, talks about how appalled he was at Moore’s interview with an obviously senile Charlton Heston at the end of Bowling for Columbine). They also include debate, on both sides, on how much good Moore’s films have actually done (for every one who thinks Moore has been a much-needed shot in the arm for the left, there are those like Errol Morris, who think Moore merely preaches to the choir). Finally, they examine what Moore has done with his celebrity, and his stands outside of his films (going from being an enthusiastic Nader supporter in 2000 to being totally against him in 2004. As Nader pointed out, what hurt is not that Moore campaigned for Kerry – as many people did, he thought Kerry had a legitimate chance of being Bush and voted accordingly – but that he repudiated Nader so thoroughly).
Like its subject, Manufacturing Dissent has both its good and bad points. On the good side, Caine and Melnyk give room to those who also praise Moore as well as damn him (or, in the case of Pierson, do both), and while they show those who think Moore is a traitor for speaking his mind, they clearly don’t have sympathy for that point of view. And much of what they target Moore for is troubling (although I’m surprised at one thing they don’t target; they bring up the cartoon Moore showed in Bowling for Columbine, but not that he implied it was done by South Park cartoonists Trey Parker and Matt Stone, since it came right after interviewing Stone. The pair retaliated by making him a villain in their movie Team America: World Police). On the other hand, often they get bogged down in nitpicking, and seem to forget every documentary film edits out something that doesn’t fit their story, even cinema verite. And often, the film seems scattershot, as if it needed Moore to come in and tighten it up a bit.
Although I do not consider Pixar the masterpiece factory many critics do, it’s undeniable their films are normally head and shoulders above most of the stuff that passes for movies made for kids (except for the merely okay Monsters Inc.). I even liked Cars more than most people did. And while Brad Bird’s Ratatouille didn’t knock me out of the park like it did many critics, it’s still an impressive piece of work. Of course, I’m one of those people who think Bird’s first film, Iron Giant, is his best film, so any film he does after that has a tough act to follow. Also, while the idea of a rat being a gourmet, let alone advising a garbage boy how to be one, is novel, a movie set in the kitchen of a restaurant isn’t really (especially when the garbage boy falls for the cook who supervises him). And the plot turns do become a bit predictable towards the end. But all of that seems like niggling next to the animation, which becomes better and more vivid with each Pixar film. Also, as in his last film, The Incredibles, Bird is celebrating talent over mediocrity, and backs it up with talent of is own, which we should all appreciate (and not-so-slyly bites the hand feeding him; it’s said one of the points of contention between Pixar and Disney is how Disney made direct-to-DVD sequels to their classic animated films, thus cheapening the originals. So in this movie, a chef wants to make fast food ripoffs of a classic restaurant.). Finally, the voice cast does terrific work here. I don’t know Patton Oswalt’s work (except as the voice of Captain Dementor on the animated show Kim Possible), but he’s quite good as Remy, that gourmet rat, even if he does sound a lot like Richard Dreyfus. I spent the entire film trying to figure out who voiced Remy’s father, not realizing it was a relatively restrained Brian Dennehy. Ian Holm as a terrific time as the Skinner, the sinister chef (though he, Janeane Garofalo (as Colette, the supervisor and love interest to garbage boy Linguini (Lou Romano), and Brad Garrett as Gusteau (the chef who inspired Remy) strain at times with their French accents), and best of all, Peter O’Toole is all oily condescension as Anton Ego, the restaurant critic. At the end of the film, Ego says that while a critic’s position is mostly negative, he must sometimes realize great talent can come from anywhere, and defend it as such. Ratatouille doesn’t quite inspire that passion from me, but like Ego and others, it did leave me hungry for more.
Included on the DVD for Ratatouille are two short films – one featuring Remy and his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) narrating an animated history of rats, and Lifted, one of the funniest bits of animated film ever made, lasting only five minutes. The latter is also available on Pixar Short Films Collection, along with 12 other shorts, including the one that started it all, The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. This set may be for completists only (most of them are available separately on other Pixar feature releases), but it’s a reminder that their short films are just as good in some ways as their features. Along with Lifted, the best of these is Jack-Jack Attack, the spin-off from The Incredibles, which explains why the babysitter was so harried when the Incredibles returned from saving the world.
This week’s big DVD collection, besides the Pixar shorts, is something called the “Leading Ladies Collection, Volume 2.” If you don’t want to pony up the $55 for the whole collection (which includes I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Rich and Famous, and Up the Down Staircase), you can just get the best film in the collection, Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon. To say Parker has had a checkered career is a gross understatement to say the least; he’s gone from very good (The Commitments) to very bad (The Life of David Gale) and back again. Shoot the Moon, however, remains his finest achievement. Bo Goldman may be best known for his Oscar-winning scripts for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Melvin and Howard, but this is his best work as well. This examination of George (Albert Finney), a writer, and his wife Faith (Diane Keaton) is the truest, most painful examination of divorce ever put to film. What makes it all the more wrenching is neither George nor Faith is entirely good or bad; both of them can be petty and selfish, yet also amazingly sympathetic. And it also pays attention to how divorce affects the children without ever getting sappy, particularly George’s relationship with his oldest daughter Sherry (Dana Hill). In an interview with American Film, Parker called this his most personal film, even though he didn’t write it, because he had four children and could relate (Goldman had six). Yet it’s never completely a downer. It’s alive to the idiosyncrasies of family life (as when Sherry and her three sisters help Faith get ready for a big evening out), and the relationships George and Faith have with others – George with Sandy (Karen Allen), and Faith with her contractor Frank (Peter Weller) – are also well drawn. Finney and Keaton are both actors who can coast on mannerisms, but they’re both terrific here, as is Hill (whose career was tragically cut short by her death at 32 of a stroke). Pauline Kael, who was usually hard to impress, wrote how afraid she was that she couldn’t do the film justice, and after watching, it’s easy to see why.
All political thrillers in this country owe a debt to Costa-Gavras’ Z, about the assassination of a prime minister in Greece, and the attempted cover-up of the investigation. Gavras’ daughter Julie is interested in politics as well, but goes for a more comic look in her feature film debut Blame it on Fidel. The film concerns Anna (Nina Kervel-Bay), a 9-year-old girl in early 1970’s Paris. Anna is generally happy with her life – her parents Marie and Fernando (Julie Depardieu and Stefano Accorsi) live in a nice house, she has friends, she goes to a Catholic school which she likes, she gets to see her grandparents all the time, and they have a Cuban nanny whom she adores. But her parents start to change when Fernando’s sister and her daughter escape from Spain. The husband has been arrested under Franco’s regime, and Fernando feels guilty enough that he and Marie turn from liberals to radicals. Before long, Anna has been taken from her house, she’s no longer allowed to attend religious classes, the nanny has been let go (having fled Cuba when Castro came to power, she’s disdainful of Communists, hence the movie’s title), to be replaced by whoever Fernando and Marie thinks needs a job the most, and Fernando has become a more activist lawyer, while Marie goes from writing about cooking to writing about women who have abortions. Anna, of course, is happy with none of this, since her life has been disrupted, and she doesn’t understand.
All of this could have been a tract, but Gavras is after something subtler. Anna decides to test out the solidarity theory her parents always talk about by joining the class in guessing the wrong answer to a question, even though she knows the right one. The new nannies she get give her different creation myths depending on their background, and she tries them on in class, with mixed results. She’s astonished when her friend from class is shocked by Fernando being naked, and that she doesn’t know where babies come from. These and other incidents show the wry humor Gavras sees this world through (although the movie is based on a popular French novel, it obviously resonates with Gavras’ own life). And while she tells her tale exclusively through Anna’s eyes, Gavras is obviously alive to what Anna herself can’t quite understand, and treats every character with kindness (even Fernando and Marie’s radical friends, who start off quite pompous, become likable). At the end, Anna is able to adjust to her new life, and we see that in small gestures, much like Gavras does with the rest of the movie.

New DVD Releases October 30

2007-10-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

Although he hasn’t always been popular with critics or audiences, I’m still a fan of Lawrence Kasdan. Sure, he’s made some duds (Wyatt Earp, Dreamcatcher), but mostly, his films go outside the cookie-cutter formula of most films to try and say something about us (as with his best film, The Accidental Tourist). And he even may have passed on his talent to his sons. Jake Kasdan has already done some fine work in offbeat comedies like the underrated Zero Effect and The TV Set, and the uneven but still worthwhile Orange County. Jon Kasdan may someday reach the heights of his brother and father, but on the evidence of In the Land of Women, his directorial debut, he’s still got a way to go. Admittedly, how much is his fault and how much is the studio’s (this has been sitting on the shelf for a while, and there are some rather abrupt transitions in the movie) is up for debate, but this still plays like a rough cut rather than the real thing.
Part of the problem is also Adam Brody, who plays the main character, Carter, a writer of soft-core porn who wants to write a serious novel about his life. Down in the dumps when his girlfriend Sofia (Elena Anaya), a model/actress, dumps him, he leaves L.A. to be with his dying grandmother (Olympia Dukakis, doing shtick, as opposed to her honest performance in Away From Her). This storyline has potential, but Brody (essentially playing Kasdan) doesn’t find it. I’ve never watched The O.C., the show that made Brody a star, so I don’t have any preconceived notions of his persona, but instead of playing the emotion of his character, he merely indicates it. Brody’s okay when he’s supposed to be funny (his reaction when his grandmother answers the door wearing just pajamas), but not when he’s supposed to be serious.
Kasdan does better with the women of the title, the family next door that befriends Carter. Meg Ryan is always good when a director strips her mannerisms away, and she’s good here as Sarah, the lonely mother whose husband (Clark Gregg) is having an affair (it’s too bad Kasdan sticks her with a cancer subplot, though). Kristen Stewart, who was terrific in a small part in Into the Wild, is also very good here as Sarah’s oldest daughter Lucy, who resents her mother and is drawn in her own way to Carter. Where there’s always something affected about Ryan, Stewart seems completely natural. And Mackenzie Vega rounds out the trio as youngest sister Paige, being charming, especially in the scene when she asks Carter to marry her. Clearly, Kasdan can direct actors, and he has some talent in writing. Hopefully, he’ll be able to move on to better things.
After the many documentaries dealing with the Iraq War, it’s understandable Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight seemed no different, which is probably why it didn’t do too well at the box office. But this isn’t the usual perspective of someone from the outside, as with documentaries by Robert Greenwald and Michael Moore, nor does it spend time questioning our rationale for going to war. Rather, Ferguson interviews people who were involved in implementing policy in Iraq after the invasion was complete and Saddam Hussein had been deposed. And while what they’re saying isn’t new (books such as “The Assassins Gate” have documented this crisis), it’s all the more powerful here, not just because it’s done on such a visual and visceral level. It’s also powerful because those being interviewed – among them Barbara Bodine, the ambassador to Iraq, retired Colonel Jay Garner, in charge of the Office of Recovery & Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), and Colonel Paul Hughes, who was in charge of working with the armed forces – don’t come off as self-righteous know-it-alls. Rather, they are haunted by their failure to make the administration listen to their reasons, and the research and experience that backed up those reasons, for not carrying out the policy the administration insisted on carrying out. Ferguson, through narrator Campbell Scott, tells all of this in a sober, analytical manner, which makes it all the more devastating to watch. I certainly hope No End in Sight is the type of movie people will catch up to when they say they’re waiting for the DVD to come out.
On its most basic level, Kasi Lemmons’ Talk to Me is a biopic about Petey Greene (Don Cheadle), the ex-con who became a controversial shock jock in 1960’s Washington D.C., and later a community activist and standup comedian. But it’s also a study of the African-American experience. When we first meet Greene, he’s in prison for armed robbery, but also doing a radio show. As it happens, Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) happens to be in prison one day visiting his brother, and he dutifully tells Greene to look him up when he gets out. Dewey is the program director at an urban radio station (it plays soul and R&B), and he wants to take the station in a bolder direction. What he doesn’t count on is Greene showing up at the station (he wins early release from prison for talking a prisoner down from the roof – a prisoner he had to convince to go up to the roof in the first place) wanting a job as a DJ. The rest of the film is mostly a look at the relationship between Greene and Hughes, each of whom initially mistrusts the other – Greene thinks Hughes is an Uncle Tom (derisively comparing him to Sidney Poitier, who was also considered by many blacks at the time as being an Uncle Tom), while Hughes thinks of Greene as little more than a con man reveling in his ignorance. But in subtle ways, Lemmons reveals how each man is more complicated than that. Hughes wants to shake things up at the station in his own way, while Hughes, in a tragic turning point – the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. – expresses his anger and sorrow in a broadcast one night, while also calling on his fellow African-Americans not to forget King’s message of non-violence. Lemmons’ film does falter in the last third after Greene walks off The Tonight Show – which Hughes saw as a betrayal of himself and Greene’s talent (Hughes had become Greene’s manager) – but this is still funny and thought-provoking. Cheadle, of course, captures both Greene’s bravado and the insecurity behind it, and Ejiofor matches him well as Hughes (and again, does a persuasive American accent). There’s also good work from Taraji Henson as Greene’s girlfriend and Cedric the Entertainer as a fellow DJ.
As with many sequels, Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3 feels like a list more than a movie. Returning hero Spiderman/Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire)? Check. Returning girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst)? Check. Returning nemeses in the form of former best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco) and employer J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons)? Check. New potential love interest (Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard))? Check. New villains both resentful (Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), who becomes the Sandman, who just wants to help his daughter, and Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), who wants Peter Parker’s job, and becomes Venom) and alien (the symbiote, which comes from a meteor, and attaches itself first to Peter, exposing his dark side, and then Eddie, turning him into Venom)? Check. Oh, and soap opera-like plot twists (Flint is really the one who killed Uncle Ben, Harry bumps his head and forgets he hates Peter)? Check. Some of this has potential (Peter exploring his dark side, for one), and there are, of course, thrilling special effects (the fight scene between Spiderman and the new Green Goblin), but it all feels overstuffed and incoherent. Also, some of the echoes with the first two movies feel forced (Spiderman recreating the kiss scene of the first movie with Gwen Stacy). More than that, however, is the numbing feeling you get when the film, once again, trumpets Spiderman as a all-American character (he’s even seen flying in front of an American flag), and pounding us in the head with this, rather than letting it develop.
For our TV watch this week, before Felicity Porter, before Buffy Summers, before Sydney Bristow, before Lindsay Weir, and before Veronica Mars, there was Angela Chase. Just as Velvet Underground’s low sales belie the fact that hundreds of bands came out in its wake, so My So-Called Life, despite not even reaching a full season because of low ratings, still remains the touchstone by which every teen-oriented show with a heroine at its center measures itself (Sydney and Felicity were both in college, but their emotional struggles resonated with teens because they shared similar concerns). The story of Angela (Claire Danes), a 15 year old trying to navigate high school, her family, her relationships with her friends, and her crush on classmate Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto), still resonates because creator Winnie Holzman and executive producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz never condescend to Angela or to the rest of the characters.
Many stories have been written about that, as well as the emotional issues Angela and her friends confront, the way it handled the character of Ricky (Wilson Cruz), who struggled with revealing the fact he was gay, the way the failure of the show meant shows wanting to portray teens in a non-soap opera way had to do it in heightened circumstances (hence shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Veronica Mars), and of course, whether the show would still have been good had it gone on to a second season or more. What few people talk about is how funny the show was. One of the grace notes was how the show either used humor to make a point or to leaven the seriousness of the show. Even a relationship as fraught with drama as the one Angela had with her mother Patty (Bess Armstrong) had its humorous moments. In the episode “The Zit,” Patty has found out Angela won’t be in a mother/daughter fashion show with her because Angela thinks she’s ugly, and Patty wonders if anyone is secure about their looks, to which her husband Graham (Tom Irwin) replies, “RuPaul.” Most people remember the Christmas episode for its heartwarming and tearjerking finale, but what I remember is the scene where Brian (Devon Gummersall) calls the teen help line because he feels lonely, and Rayanne (A.J. Langer) tries to cheer him up by pretending he’s called a phone sex line instead. And “Betrayal,” the ep where Jordan and Rayanne sleep together, is full of passionate drama, but also the scene where Angela’s friend Sharon (Devon Odessa) agonizes over whether to tell Angela about it, and won’t let her other friend get a word in edgewise. It’s the little things like that, as well as the big moments, which make me miss the show, but be glad that its influence has yet to wane.

New DVD releases October 23

2007-10-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but I certainly think there’s room for a Best Years of our Lives type movie for the Iraq War. Unfortunately, Irwin Winkler’s Home of the Brave doesn’t quite cut it. As with all of the movies Winkler has directed (with the exception of the mostly entertaining The Net), his intentions are good, but the execution is always heavy-handed.
As with the original Best Years of our Lives (which is one of the all-time greats, btw), Winkler’s movie, which he co-wrote with Mark Friedman, focuses on three soldiers who belong to a National Guard unit: Will Marsh (Samuel L. Jackson), an Army doctor, Vanessa Price (Jessica Biel), a driver, and Tommy Yates (Brian Presley), another soldier. They’re set to go home, until they’re assigned for one last humanitarian mission in the town of Al Hay. Of course, they get ambushed, and in the ensuing battle, Price loses her right forearm, and Yates loses his best friend Jordan (Chad Michael Murray, of TV’s One Tree Hill). These scenes are actually the strongest of the movie; though Winkler isn’t really an action director, he does stage these scenes well and with restraint, and captures the camaraderie of the soldiers. Unfortunately, his restraint deserts him once the movie returns stateside and the soldiers have to struggle with being home.
Of course, there’s all kinds of legitimate issues raised here – soldiers feeling no one understands what they went through except other soldiers, the inadequate medical care they get stateside (Price goes to Walter Reed for her arm and passes a line of other wounded soldiers waiting for care, which is actually a pretty good shot), the struggle to have a “normal” life of family and a career, and so on. Unfortunately, except for moments here and there (as when Marsh defends his son’s right to wear a “Buck Fush” T-Shirt to school, then berates him for wearing it), Winkler and Friedman pick the most clichéd ways to deal with these issues. One flashback to that battle scene would be overkill (pardon the expression), but every character flashes back to it, as if we couldn’t figure out they were still dealing with those issues. And Curtis Jackson (a.k.a. rapper 50 Cent) plays a completely clichéd character, the Vet Who Goes Crazy From The War, and only plays it at one pitch. To be fair, he’s not the only one. Samuel L. Jackson at least tries to add some nuance to his character, but Biel and Presley are pretty much blank slates. Frankly, the best performance in the movie comes from Christina Ricci in a small role as Jordan’s girlfriend. It’s also a clichéd role, but she brings some anger and realism to it. That realism, unfortunately, is sorely lacking in Home of the Brave.
This week sees the release of, among other things, one of the funniest movies of the year. I’m speaking, of course, of Bruce A. Evans’ Mr. Brooks. Evans and co-writer Raynold Gideon can be credited for not taking the usual route of fetishizing serial killers, but what they do with it is completely bonkers. Mr. Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner), a straight-arrow businessman (he accepts a Man of the Year prize at the beginning of the film), also kills because, no matter how hard he tries, he’s addicted to it (William Hurt is Marshall, the voice inside his head urging him to kill). He even goes to AA meetings about it. Brooks is known as the Thumbprint Killer, and is finally caught – sort of – when Mr. Smith (Dane Cook), a photographer, gets a picture of Mr. Brooks in the act. Except Mr. Smith just thinks Mr. Brooks is cool, and blackmails him into committing another murder. Meanwhile, Brooks is being pursued by Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore), a detective with troubles of her own – her current ex-husband is suing her for divorce, and another serial killer she helped catch has recently escaped prison. But wait, there’s more – Brooks’ daughter Jane (Danielle Panabaker) has dropped out of school, and Brooks begins to suspect it’s maybe because his daughter is following in his footsteps.
By rights, all of this should be tiresome and offensive, especially since Evans shoots this in the style of most thrillers – as if a machine made it (except for a gun battle Moore has near the end of the film, though, he does avoid overly stylish camerawork). However, it’s so ludicrously done it’s hard to take offense. It reminded me of Gossip, the 2000 movie about date rape that, despite its subject matter, ended up being entertainingly ridiculous. From the beginning, when Brooks goes from reciting the serenity prayer (which is the standard prayer at AA meetings) to staking out his future victims, it’s clear this movie isn’t to be taken seriously (especially when we see one of Brooks’ disguises later in the film). It helps, of course, that both Costner and Hurt seem in on the joke – they’re obviously having a lot of fun. Cook neither entranced nor repulsed me, but then again, while he was obviously meant to stand in for those who are fascinated by what they should be repulsed by, his character is pretty one-note. Moore is believable as a cop, but she’s also her pretty one-note self as well. But Panabaker, whom I last saw in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, also acts like she knows the movie’s a joke, and is willing to work with it nonetheless. The now-defunct magazine Movieline used to have a monthly column called “Bad Movies we Love”; I’d like to think if they were still in business, Mr. Brooks would be the subject of one of those columns.
Three new movies come out on Criterion this week – two of them classics, one an interesting failure. The classics, of course, are Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, while the interesting failure is John Huston’s Under the Volcano. Godard’s film may not have technically been the first film of the so-called “French New Wave,” but it definitely made the most noise worldwide. And long before Quentin Tarantino, Godard, in this film, was paying homage to low-budget genre films – in this case, gangster films (the film is dedicated to Monogram Pictures, which made many B-gangster movies). Perhaps it’s because of the so-called “post-modern” era of movies we’re in right now that Godard’s film looks as fresh today as it was then. Of course, it also helps Godard hadn’t discovered his didactic side yet. This version, which runs two discs, includes vintage interviews with Godard and the cast, new interviews with the surviving crew members, documentaries, and a documentary about the making of the film.
More so than even Godard, Malick has had as many detractors as defenders. I fall in the latter category – normally, I’m impatient with movies that want to chew on the scenery at the expense of story, but no one comes close to Malick in making the natural world around him contribute to the mood of the story. To me, Days of Heaven is the best example of this. The plot may lift itself from Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove – a dying farmer (Sam Shepard) falls in love with a girl working on the farm (Brooke Adams), and her boyfriend (Richard Gere), who’s posing as her brother, allows it so that when the farmer dies, they can inherit his money – but the way Malick tells it makes it unfold like a dream. A lot, of course, can be made of the gorgeous cinematography (shot by Nestor Alemondros and Haskell Wexler), but credit should also go to the performers (this is one of the few movies I like Gere and Shepard in, Adams is radiant, and as Gere’s little sister and the narrator, Linda Manz is also terrific). This version includes a new transfer, commentary by crew members including Wexler, and an interview with Wexler.
John Huston was not only a maverick for most of his film career, but he could never resist a challenge. The challenge of filming Malcolm Lowry’s novel, long considered unfilmable, must have appealed to him enormously. Unfortunately, while Huston of course captures the atmosphere of Mexico (where the story is set), and Albert Finney does his usual fine work as the British Consul who drinks himself to death, the story doesn’t really go anywhere, and Jacqueline Bisset (as the Consul’s ex-wife) and Anthony Andrews (as Bisset’s new boyfriend) are rather flat. This version does include quite a few extras, including documentaries about the film and Lowry, new interviews with Bisset and Andrews, and an old interview with Huston by French critic Michel Clement.
Two TV shows that took their final bows last season also come out on DVD this week. Both of them were critically acclaimed, but only the former made a significant dent in the viewing public. That show, of course, was The Sopranos, which has, if nothing else, had more written about it than any other TV show. The final half of the sixth season saw Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) still trying to recover from his shooting at the hands of Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese), while Christopher (Michael Imperioli) finally gets his movie made, Tony’s war with Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent), who has taken over for the dying Johnny Sack, escalates, and Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) continues to have problems finding direction in his life. All of this, as with the first part of the season, seems unwieldy at times, and it isn’t until the war between Tony and Phil really escalates that the series took off. Still, it’s still fascinating how creator David Chase dared to play on our identification with Tony and make him, if anything, darker and more volatile.
While The Sopranos ended on its own accord (though there may yet be a movie), Veronica Mars, the teen detective drama, was cancelled after three seasons because of low ratings, despite critical acclaim and a loyal fan base. The third season, admittedly, had its share of problems. For starters, it was yet another high school show that had a rough transition going to college. Also, supporting characters like Wallace (Percy Daggs III) and Weevil (Francis Capra) had little or nothing to do, and the relationship between Veronica (Kristen Bell) and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Logan (Jason Dohring) seemed stagnant. Finally, there were individual episodes that were poor, due to either the network wanting the show to be more of a soap opera, or creator Rob Thomas losing his creative nerve, depending on who you talked to (and vocal debate about the show reached its peak during the third season). Still, the two mini mystery arcs – the first one had Veronica trying to find a serial rapist on campus, while the second had Veronica and her father Keith (Enrico Colantoni) trying to solve the murder of the college dean – were both compelling and well written. And with Veronica and Keith, the show still had the best father/daughter relationship on TV.
Speaking of TV, arguably the biggest disappointment of the year was the TNT miniseries The Company, adapted from the best-selling novel by Robert Littell. As someone who liked the novel, who loves spy stories in general, and being one of the few, it seems, who loved The Good Shepherd, I was really looking forward to this, but it stiffed on so many levels. First of all, I understand adapting a 800+ page novel for a 6 hour miniseries means some stuff has to go (one major character was dropped), but there was no flow to the story. It seemed like director Mikael Salomon and writer Ken Nolan merely filmed the novel’s greatest hits (and also gave Jack McCauliffe (Chris O’Donnell) all the major plot points). Secondly, the story is supposed to span 50 years or so, yet the only one’s who act like that are Rory Cochrane (as Yevgeny, the Soviet spy living in America) and Michael Keaton (as James Angleton, the increasingly paranoid CIA Director of Intelligence). O’Donnell in particular merely acts like he’s just wearing a gray wig. Also, while the series does deserve credit for trying to deglamorize spying, it doesn’t go as far in that respect as The Good Shepherd and previous series like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy did. Finally, the performances are a mixed bag. Keaton and Cochrane are good, and Alfred Molina comes off well as Harvey, Jack’s mentor. But Alessandro Nivola has little to do as Jack’s friend and colleague Leo, and O’Donnell simply is too much of a cream puff to carry a so-called serious miniseries like this.

New DVD Releases October 16

2007-10-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

This week’s new releases include two movies based on true stories, the first half of a double-bill movie, which was released on DVD a month after the second half, a movie from one of France’s leading directors, and an HBO film new to DVD. So let’s get to it!
In 1970, Clifford Irving, a novelist and biographer of celebrated art forger Elmyr de Hory, decided to have a go at a bit of fakery of his own. He and his writer friend Richard Suskind decided to write an autobiography on Howard Hughes, the half-mad multi-millionaire tycoon who had cut himself off from the world. On the theory that the ever-reclusive Hughes wouldn’t dare to challenge any claims of authenticity on his part, Irving went to his publishers, McGraw Hill, with three forged letters from Hughes that he claimed granted him permission to tell Hughes’ life story. McGraw Hill, of course, accepted Irving’s word, and the rest is history. Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hoax attempts to tell this tale, but it may have been too big for him.
For starters, Irving is played here by Richard Gere. Gere has proven to be best when he plays someone with either evil thoughts (Internal Affairs) or amoral ones (Primal Fear) in his head, and Irving would seem a lock. He certainly has the wig for it, and gives the impression of going for broke, especially when he enthuses to Suskind (Alfred Molina) that the more outrageous he sounds, the more gullible everyone is. The problem is, there’s something too calculated about Gere’s approach. Granted, a con artist also has to be calculating, but the approach needs to seem effortless, and Gere can’t pull that off (while it’s refreshing Gere has allowed himself to age, it hasn’t made him more expressive). And as in Primal Fear, his character softens up, this time through love (he’s married to Edith (Marcia Gay Harden), who at first eagerly participates in Irving’s scheme, but still lusts after Nina Van Pallandt (Julie Delpy), the actress best known for her role in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye), which makes him feel guilty and conflicted. It’s a heaviness the film hasn’t earned. It doesn’t help that Delpy has nothing to do, and while Harden starts off well, she soon plays Edith as one-note.
More importantly, while the first half hour or so zips along, thanks to the comic tone (sustained by other actors, particularly Molina and Hope Davis as Irving’s editor), the film runs aground when Irving gets delusions of paranoia, specifically of Nixon. While Nixon and Hughes had little to do with each other by this time, Hughes, while initially a booster of Nixon, was apparently disenchanted enough with Nixon he sent Irving files which he hoped would ruin Nixon. And apparently, one of the causes of the Watergate break-in was Nixon’s concern about the Irving book, which apparently would have enough to ruin Nixon. This may all have been true, but it comes off as far-fetched, and Hallstrom plays it as if he isn’t sure whether to play it straight or satirically. And again, this change in tone doesn’t feel earned in any way. Irving himself was one of the subjects of Orson Welles’ documentary F for Fake; maybe this project needed a Welles to completely capture this mad story.
The other docudrama coming out on DVD this week is Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, about Marianne Pearl’s effort to find her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by an extremist group in Pakistan in January of 2002. It also focuses on the police who tried to help Marianne, mostly a Pakistan detective known simply as Captain (Irfan Khan), and Randall Bennett (Will Patton), an American government agent who’s along to help. Although the film was justly praised by critics for Winterbottom’s direction (he and writer John Orloff make this more like a procedural thriller rather than a political film), most of the attention was on Jolie’s performance – specifically, whether she was right for the part at all.
I haven’t always been a fan of Jolie, but there’s something inscrutable about her at times, and I think that works with this performance. After all, in the book this movie is based on, Marianne Pearl didn’t try to elicit any cheap sympathy for her story (in the movie, we see her TV interviews, and a technician marveling – or speaking disdainfully? – that you’d never know her husband had been kidnapped), and the movie respects that point of view. The only time Marianne becomes unglued is when she’s told of her husband’s death, and the camera stays behind her at a respectful distance, instead of wallowing in her grief. It’s this dignity Jolie brings to her performance. She also brings out Marianne’s innate curiosity about people, particularly the Captain (Khan, an actor best known for Bollywood films, is similarly dignified). Jolie isn’t the only reason to see A Mighty Heart, which is one of my favorite films of the year so far, but she’s every bit as good as the movie needs her to be.
One month after Death Proof was released on DVD, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, the first half of the Grindhouse double feature, follows suit. Most of the critics I read seemed to prefer Death Proof (directed by Quentin Tarantino), while most of my friends preferred Rodriguez’s film. I have to side with the critics on this one. Admittedly, aside from the original Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, and Shaun of the Dead, I’m not a big zombie film fan, and I’m not a fan of Rodriguez, but I really don’t understand the appeal of this film.
I will say this; for the first time since his debut film El Mariachi, Rodriguez has given us characters to care about, and while Rose McGowan is hardly my favorite actress, she’s actually pretty good here as the heroine (and, of course, there’s the whole thing with having a machine gun leg, which admittedly is pretty cool), as is Freddy Rodriguez as The Ex-Boyfriend Who Still Cares. And it’s always nice to see actors like Michael Biehn (who plays the sheriff). And whatever faults Rodriguez has, you can’t accuse him of being a cynical filmmaker; he clearly is in love with what he’s doing. But his efforts at humor here are decidedly mixed (the machine gun thing, of course, is funny, but the Crazy Babysitting Twins – played by the Crazy Babysitting Twins – are one-joke characters that weren’t that funny to begin with), the political subtext (Bruce Willis plays an Army lieutenant whose platoon was infected while trying to get Bin Laden) seems tacked on, and while some found the excessive gore either fun or artful, I found it wearying.
Four years ago, Patrice Leconte directed Man on the Train, a terrific crime dramedy about two middle-aged men, one a retired schoolteacher, the other a criminal in town to pull a bank robbery. Leconte returns to the subject of friendship with My Best Friend. In this one, Daniel Auteuil plays Francois, an antiques dealer who seems cut off from everyone. At a dinner he was with colleagues, his business partner Catherine (Julie Gayet) challenges him to name at least one friend he has. Instead, Francois bets he can reproduce a friend in 10 days, and the bet is a vase he bid on at an auction (of course, the vase has a painting on it symbolizing friendship).
At this point, my heart sank, because it seemed like Leconte was making a sitcom out of the very subject he treated so seriously, yet comically, in his previous, much better film. Things don’t get any better with the character he eventually hires to teach him friendship skills, Bruno (Danny Boon). Bruno is a cab driver (natch) who loves to spout arcane trivia on all kinds of subjects (when they first meet cute, Bruno is giving Francois a cab ride, and tells him what famous people live, or lived, on the street they’re on), but also seems to be able to get along with people. Yet he lives with his parents still. This eventually turns into the kind of lighthearted farce the French theoretically are still good at, but it becomes wearisome here. Admittedly, were it from a director other than Leconte, I might not care so much. But in addition to Man on the Train, Leconte has made other great movies about lonely people, like his terrific Hitchcock-esque film Monsieur Hire, and even his misfires (The Hairdresser’s Husband) show obvious talent behind them. This movie shows an enervated talent. What’s worse, Leconte apparently no longer wants to do the serious-minded movies he’s known for, and for his last few movies before he calls it quits, he just wants to enjoy himself. I hope he did, cause I sure didn’t.
In 1995, HBO asked New Yorkers – as well as tourists – to submit their favorite true story about riding in the subway. The network then picked the ten best stories they got out of thousands, and the result is Subway Stories. As the movie came out in 1997, some of the segments may seem a little dated, even quaint, but the themes (people on the subway are crazy, white people don’t trust minorities, and vice versa, subway cars sure do smell) are still relevant today. Rosie Perez exec-produced the show, and she also appears in one of the best segments, “Love on the A Train,” directed by Abel Ferrara, about a businessman (Mike McGlone) who ends up giving satisfaction – in more ways than one – to a mysterious woman (Perez) every morning on the train. As you might expect, some segments are better than others, but at 80 minutes, the movie doesn’t wear out its welcome, and the best segments (my personal favorite is Bob Balaban’s “The 5:24,” about a young businessman (Steve Zahn) who wonders if the old man (Jerry Stiller) giving him stock tips is for real, or a con artist) are a lot of fun.

New DVD releases October 9

2007-10-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine once wrote how, when she had a regular arts critic column (arts covering movies and TV), she could never quite reconcile whether she was a critic, fan, or both, and how the film version The Color Purple exposed that conflict. As a critic, she loathed it, but as a fan, she wept through it copiously. After seeing Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me, I can definitely relate. As a critic, I must say Reign Over Me is manipulative, heavy-handed, and misogynistic (after his brief turn towards writing good women characters in The Upside of Anger, Binder is back to his old ways). As a fan, however, I must say Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle moved me more than I thought possible. As Anthony Lane pointed out in his review for The New Yorker, it’s strange to recommend any Adam Sandler movie, let alone one dealing with 9/11, but there you go.
Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, whose wife and kids were on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Since then, of course, he’s been anything but fine. He plays video games, listens to music from the 70’s and 80’s on his iPod, travels around lower Manhattan on his scooter, and in general shields himself from anything reminding him of the tragedy he suffered, including his in-laws (Robert Klein and Melinda Dillon). It’s while on the scooter that he runs into Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), his former college roommate. Alan has a successful dentistry practice, though his marriage to Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith) feels stuck in neutral. At first merely bemused by Charlie’s state of mind, Alan tries to help him, which isn’t helped by Charlie’s violent outbursts whenever confronted by his past.
Binder (who also appears as Charlie’s accountant) wants to talk about how we, as New Yorkers, and as people in general, prefer not to confront out grief, and result not only eats away at us, but affects the people who may care about us as well (Charlie’s in-laws are concerned enough to want to put Charlie away). That’s certainly a laudable goal, but he doesn’t always dramatize it well. Too often, shouting matches substitute for drama, especially in a courtroom scene (though as the judge, Donald Sutherland does redeem himself in a later scene). Worse, as I said before, almost every woman here (with the possible exception of Alan’s receptionist Melanie (Paula Newsome)) is badly drawn. Janeane is one-note (yes, it’s a loveless marriage, but there must have been something there), Angela Oakhurst (Liv Tyler), a psychiatrist Alan recruits to help Charlie, has some nice comic moments when she initially thinks Alan is fishing for treatment for himself, but is otherwise merely earnest, and there’s a painful subplot involving Saffron Burrows as a patient name Donna who is obsessed with Alan (though she later becomes attracted to Charlie).
And yet, Binder doesn’t suggest that Alan magically heals Charlie, but that it’s a long, slow, and often painful process for both of them. I’ve liked Sandler best when he deepens his man-child persona to show the desperation fueling that persona (as in Punch-Drunk Love and his performance in the otherwise appalling Spanglish), and he delivers another great performance here. And anyone who doesn’t at least mist up when Charlie finally reveals what happened to his family that day should check their pulse. Cheadle once again is, in theory, playing an African-American who helps a white guy find himself, but Binder does make it a little more complicated than that here, and Cheadle underplays the part very well. I may not like myself for saying this, but I sort of liked Reign Over Me.
28 Days Later started out with a particularly scary scene, had the creepiest cut to credits sequence ever (of course, after the events of the credits, the screen went to black and the title card came up briefly), had an eerie sequence of empty London, had the novelty of being the first zombie movie where they were speedy rather than slow, and made its social statements obliquely. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, has some pretty creepy sequences (particularly the opening, where Robert Carlyle and Catherine McCormack (playing a couple), along with others, try to fight off zombies), but as befitting most sequels, it’s falls short in everything else (the title card, for example, gives updated progress – “2 weeks later” and all that). In addition, it suffers from plot holes – how, for example, when a city is supposedly under martial law, do two kids manage to escape into the “forbidden zone” (where zombies may still be a threat) with the military watching them, and yet nothing is done until the last minute? When a European filmmaker makes his first English-speaking film and it turns out badly, the temptation is always there to blame Hollywood for messing with the style of the filmmaker, and while that is often true, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s previous film, Intacto, had some creepy and stylish scenes but also suffered from plot incoherency, so one wonders who was at fault here.
After Grosse Pointe Blank, The Sopranos, and the like, you’d think it’d be pretty hard to wring laughs out of the premise of a hitman who’s suffering a mid-life crisis, but John Dahl’s You Kill Me does pretty well on that score. The premise, of course, is faintly ridiculous. Frank (Ben Kingsley) is an alcoholic hitman working for the Polish mob in upstate New York who botches a hit on an Irish gangster named O’Leary (Dennis Farina) and, as a result, is sent to San Francisco by his boss (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to dry up. Frank, of course, doesn’t think he has a drinking problem, but he goes, gets a job in a mortuary (Bill Pullman, who starred in Dahl’s The Last Seduction, plays his contact here), goes to AA meetings (Luke Wilson plays his sponsor), and falls in love with a woman named Laurel (Tea Leoni), a corporate sales exec (they meet cute when he’s the attendant for her stepfather). While he struggles with his alcoholism, and what to tell Laurel, his family has to deal with O’Leary muscling in on their business. What makes this work is the telling – Dahl and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (this was their first script, which they followed with, improbably, the first Chronicles of Narnia movie) show there are still laughs to be had out of this shopworn premise. Most of them come thanks to Kingsley, who plays off of his Sexy Beast performance rather nicely, and from Leoni, which is especially good news since those of us who worshipped her performance in Flirting with Disaster have been waiting in vain for a good showcase for her ever since (as her roles in Deep Impact, The Family Man and Spanglish hardly qualify). Her deadpan line readings and undeniable chemistry with Kingsley make this comedy, if you’ll pardon the expression, kill.
Anyone who lives or works in Manhattan will see a guy (usually; occasionally a woman), often an immigrant, working a food cart, be it a hot dog stand, peanut stand, coffee stand, or even something more exotic. Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart explores the life of one of these men, in this case, Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), a Pakistani and former rock star who now runs a coffee cart and, as a sideline, sells porn movies under the table (so to speak). He meets a couple of people who want to help him, like Mohammed (Charles Daniel Sandoval), a Pakistani businessman whose fully assimilated and remembers Ahmad’s career as a rock star, and Noemi (Leticia Dolera), a Spanish woman who works at a newsstand. Bahrani apparently took inspiration from Camus’ essay on the myth of Sisyphus (whose punishment, courtesy of the gods, was to roll a rock up and down the hill), except while, according to Camus, Sisyphus did this in triumphant defiance, Ahmad does it because he has no choice in the matter. This is a weighty subject for an American film, even an indie film, and Bahrani doesn’t quite pull it off; he and Razvi can’t quite make Ahmad interesting even as he isn’t master of his own fate. Still, this is certainly a side of America rarely seen, and Bahrani doesn’t make the mistake of marking everyone with the same brush (at worst, Ahmad gets indifference from his customers, and some of them even are friendly towards him).
In the 1960’s, Motown acts grabbed most of the headlines and rose higher in the charts, but for my money, when it came to soul music, Stax Records, founded in Memphis in 1957, had the better musicians and made the better music. Motown, or its house band, was the subject a few years ago in the great documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Now Stax gets an even better doc with Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, this doc shows how Stax was more than just a great music label (which it was, of course – any label with the Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, and Booker T and the Mg’s, not to mention Otis Redding, deserves that description and then some). It also was a positive force in the civil rights struggle in the 1960’s. Of course, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the tragic death of Redding helped deal a body blow to Stax; it recovered in the 70’s with artists like Isaac Hayes and Johnny Taylor, but soon after their big concert Wattstax in L.A. (a concert film which is also highly recommended), Stax’s financial troubles forced it to close. There’s nothing new here, but the story is well told by the participants (all of the ones still alive are here to tell about it), and all remember the joy, as well as the sadness, of being part of arguably America’s best record label of the 1960’s, if not of all time.

Michael Clayton and The Darjeeling Limited

2007-10-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

As Michael Clayton opens, we hear a man, who turns out to be a lawyer, ranting almost incomprehensibly, while we see activity late at night at a law firm. In one of the offices of said firm, while many lawyers work feverishly, a partner at said firm is assuring a reporter on the phone that any talk of a settlement in a major case is completely groundless. Meanwhile, another lawyer sits on a toilet in the bathroom, sweating through the armpits in their shirt. Finally, we see a man playing cards late at night. Later, that man takes a drive to a house to try and solve a problem, after which he starts to drive back. However, he stops his car near a forest, and gets out to look at three horses just standing there. Seconds later, his car blows up.
That last part is, of course, a conventional scene in any thriller these days. But what Tony Gilroy, who wrote the film and also makes his directorial debut here, does in telling the story isn’t as conventional as you’d think. I remember seeing Alec Baldwin give an interview promoting Malice where he said the thing about thrillers was character always played a secondary role to story. What that often means in Hollywood thrillers, however, is the storyline feels mechanical and robotic, each scene feels like someone held a stopwatch on the set to make sure everything is exactly the same, and the characters feel like stick figures, leaving no room for the actors to work. Gilroy obviously wanted to direct this film because he wanted to make sure you understood each of these characters, and he does. As the film goes on, you obviously understand how the characters introduced in the beginning relate to each other, but more importantly, you understand them for themselves.
After the explosion, we cut back to four days earlier. The man who babbled at the beginning of the movie is Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a lawyer for Kenner, Bach & Ledeen who has been representing a conglomerate called U North in a class action suit alleging they produced a weed killer responsible for several deaths. This suit has been dragging on for six years (the firm doesn’t care, as they like to jack up the billable hours), and at one meeting, Edens strips his clothes off and starts making an appeal to Anna (Merritt Wever), one of the plaintiffs. Is this merely a psychotic episode (Edens is on medication because he’s bipolar), or is he, like Howard Beale, mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore? Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a fixer for the law firm (or, as he’s called at various points, a janitor) who cleans up whatever mess needs cleaning. Of course, he has trouble cleaning up his own life – he’s a gambling addict (that card game at the beginning), he barely has enough money to pay for a restaurant he wants to open up with his alcoholic brother, and he barely has enough time for his four year old son Henry (Austin Williams). Nevertheless, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), the partner on the phone, dispatches him to calm down Edens (the firm is also in the middle of a merger) and assure Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), the lawyer in the bathroom and the in-house counsel for U North, that Edens is in fact okay.
Except Edens (whom Michael considers his mentor), of course, isn’t okay. He insists to Michael that U North is in fact guilty, and when he’s not babbling, he’s lucid enough to know he can’t be put away (when Michael reminds him he’s not the enemy, Edens retorts, “Then what are you?”). Edens happens to have a document he thinks will make the case for the plaintiffs. When Crowder hears about this, she panics and hires a couple of heavies (Robert Prescott and Terry Serpico) to, as she puts it, contain the situation. How it’s contained eventually leads Michael to wonder, in fact, who he really is and what he stands for.
Again, none of this is new, except in the telling. For starters, normally in a corporate thriller when the corporation is evil, the members of the corporation are meant to either be faceless or wearing neon signs on their heads saying, “Evil!” Crowder is the furthest thing from that. After that scene in the bathroom, which could be interpreted as a panic attack of her own, we see her giving a TV interview about U North. Intercut with the actually interview are scenes where she’s getting dressed and ready while rehearsing the speech she gives, stumbling over key phrases that she eventually gets correct in the actual interview. And in the scene where she meets one of the heavies is instructive – she asks what the usual procedure is (he, in turn, isn’t exactly sure what she wants them to do), and insists she’s doing this while keeping her own mentor, Don Jeffries (Ken Howard), out of any wrongdoing. And her final scene with Michael has her trying to be smooth while actually panicking. This reminds us that in every corporation, someone has to answer to somebody, and fear guides decisions as much as avarice. Even Bach has that note when he tells Michael what will happen if U North pulls their fees from them.
We also get that attention being paid to the nominal heroes of the story. Edens is seen having a long telephone conversation with Anna, and then later Henry (he’s calling for Michael), where he’s both manic and lucid at the same time. With Henry, he spends the whole time talking about the book Henry’s currently obsessed with (why will be important later). We also see Michael’s attitude towards his situation; he’s impatient with Arthur rather than listening to him, he’s concentrating on his job more than his son even when he’s with him (when Henry tries telling him about the book, he just grunts noncommittally), and he’ll do anything to avoid his alcoholic brother Timmy (David Lansbury) while just using his other brother Gene Clayton (Sean Cullen), a cop, for his own means.
Clooney has often talked about his love for movies of the 1970’s, and Gilroy said he and Clooney (who also exec-produced the film, and originally wanted to direct) talked especially about the films of Alan J. Pakula (Klute, All the President's Men) and Sidney Lumet (Network) before making this film. Although that aesthetic is certainly there, I was also reminded of two non-70’s films, Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and The Border (1982). Both involve people who step in shit for a living and seemed resigned to it, but eventually find a line they can’t cross (the difference with the former is Michael’s J.J. Hunsecker isn’t one man, but the corporation). But certainly, one thing the 70’s films Gilroy tries to emulate here have in common with his film is how they take their time with the story. Scenes that would either be dropped completely or cut down are allowed to run full length, because Gilroy wants his characters and story, not just his words, to be allowed to breathe. And the strategy works yet keeps us involved when the thriller part of the story kicks in, particularly when one of the characters is killed – it’s done in a fresh way, yet still familiar and suspenseful enough it leaves a kick.
The performances are all spot on as well. Clooney of course played a similar role in Syriana, and while he’s more glamorous looking here (as he’s have to be – his character in the other film wouldn’t have even been able to approach U North looking like he did), he’s still got the same world-weariness and barely-hidden anger. Wilkinson does manic without overdoing it. And Pollack has become expert at playing shady corporate types. But the revelation here is Swinton. Gilroy admitted in a story on Swinton for Entertainment Weekly that he cast her mostly to give the film indie cred, but was completely unprepared for what she’d bring to the film. Although the accent wavers somewhat, she gets completely inside Karen Crowder, so we can see what motivates her every step of the way, and without ever relying on mannerisms or tics, she shows the panic, and steeliness, from inside. Michael Clayton doesn’t reinvent the wheel cinematically, but by taking its time and telling a good story, it’s a true movie for adults in the best sense of the word.

I know there are people who get angry at the very mention of Wes Anderson (a critic friend of mine thinks he’s dangerous to movies), but I’m still a fan. I think, far from being unfeeling, he has a streak of melancholy running through his movies, but has the ability to combine humor with it. And while I’m usually not one who champions production and costume design over story, character and dialogue, I don’t think he is either – I think his visual worlds complement the characters and story. Finally, I think Anderson is really good at using music in his films. I even liked The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (though I definitely acknowledge it’s flawed), and I really liked The Darjeeling Limited, his latest.
Two Anderson regulars – Owen Wilson (who has appeared in all of Anderson’s films, and co-wrote three of them) and Jason Schwartzman (who appeared in Anderson’s breakout hit Rushmore, as well as his short film Hotel Chevalier) – join with newcomer Adrien Brody, playing the brothers Whitman. Francis (Wilson) has just recovered from a motorcycle accident, and his head is still covered in bandages. Peter (Brody) is about to be a father, much to his dismay, since he’s not sure he loves the mother, whom he’s married to. And Jack (Schwartzman) is still hung up on his ex-girlfriend (the subject of Hotel Chevalier – Natalie Portman, who stars in that movie, cameos in this one).
Francis has gathered them all together, a year after their father died, to go on a train trip through India, where he hopes they will all be able to go on a spiritual journey together (complete with drugs they get in India). However, the issues they have between each other surface. Jack may be hung up on his ex, but that doesn’t stop him from getting involved with a waitress on the train named Rita (Amara Karan). Peter has stolen things from his deceased father, including a pair of subscription sunglasses he wears all the time. And Francis orders the two of them around (ordering food for them) as if they were still little. More importantly, he hasn’t told them the real reason for the trip – he wants the three of them to visit their mother Patricia (Anjelica Huston), who stood them up at their father’s funeral (we flashback to when the three of them were trying to get his car for the funeral), and has been living on a mission in India.
The knocks against Anderson are several: he’s too literary (all three Whitman brothers are carrying baggage belonging to their father, which represents the emotional baggage they all carry), too much a triumph of production design over reality (the train looks especially exotic, and most importantly, that all of that and his “quirkiness” are his substitutes for genuine emotion and feeling. The first two charges can be true at times, though I think most of the time, he’s telling sort of heightened adult fairy tales, where those literary and visual touches don’t feel out of place (The Royal Tenenbaums, which is still my favorite Anderson film, is especially strong in those areas). And I still think there’s genuine feeling in Anderson’s films. That especially comes true in The Darjeeling Limited, when the three of them are thrown off the train and, while trying to find an alternate means of transportation, come across something that changes them. Although it’s been revealed in other reviews, I won’t spoil it here, for it comes as quite a shock. All I’ll say is actor Irfan Khan has been in three of my favorite movies this year (in addition to this, he’s also in The Namesake and A Mighty Heart). Oh, and Anderson doesn’t bring his so-called “quirkiness” to bear on the Indians in the movie. All of them are treated normally instead of with the “otherness” that often happens when English filmmakers deal with a foreign culture (Anderson said he was inspired by Jean Renoir’s great film The River, as well as Satyajit Ray’s films, and it shows).
All the performances are spot-on as well. It’s hard, of course, to look at Wilson and not think of his recent suicide attempt (particularly since his character’s motorcycle accident may not have been entirely accidental), but he doesn’t overdo the pathos, and makes both Francis’ bossiness and conversion believable. Brody keeps his resentments hidden well, but his scene of grief also comes through without being overly maudlin. And Schwartzman, who has been one-note in almost every other movie he’s done outside of Rushmore (the only exception being CQ, by Roman Coppola, who also co-wrote this movie with Anderson and Schwartzman), is restrained and believable here. And the three of them are convincing together as brothers. I, for one, was glad to take the trip along with The Darjeeling Limited.

New DVD Releases October 2

2007-10-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

I have a co-worker who, almost every chance he gets, will recommend Lantana, a drama/thriller from Australia that came out in 2001. It’s easy to see why; it’s a film made for and about adults without being sanctimonious about it, and without a heavy-handed touch, it explores betrayal, marriage, and what can hold us together and/or tear us apart. There’s a particularly poignant scene where one of the characters insists her husband wasn’t involved in the death of a woman, because “he told me he didn’t do it,” and you realize she and her husband are the only ones in the film who have the kind of relationship to make that line ring true. The dead body, a woman, is shown in the opening sequence of Lantana, and it hangs over the entire film. Another dead woman is show early on in director Ray Lawrence’s follow-up film, Jindabyne, and it also hangs over the entire film, though in a markedly different way.
For starters, whereas Lantana was set in the suburbs and city, this film is set in more isolated and rural areas. This is no accident, for two reasons. One, the body is eventually discovered during a fishing trip. Those on the trip include Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne), a former racecar champion who now runs a garage, and his friends Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone). When they find the body, instead of immediately going for help, they tie the dead girl to the rocks ostensibly to keep it from floating away, and only after going fishing for a full day afterwards do they cut their trip off and go to the police. The second reason is the young dead girl (Tatea Reilly) is Maori, and the Aboriginal community is naturally furious, wondering if Stewart and his friends would have acted this way if the girl was white. For that reason, and for reasons even she can’t fully explain, Stewart’s wife Claire (Laura Linney) is shaken by the event, and wonders if she can ever fully trust or relate to Stewart again.
If the first part sounds familiar, then you’ve either read the Raymond Carver short story “So Much Water So Close to Home,” or seen the Robert Altman movie Short Cuts, a filmed version of many Carver stories, including that one (in the Altman movie, Fred Ward plays the fisherman, and Anne Archer is his wife). Similarly, the second part, as well as the visuals Lawrence and cinematographer David Williamson give us of the rural area, may remind you of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, or Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout. Unfortunately, while there’s a lot to like in Lawrence’s film, neither part measures up to its predecessors.
The film starts out well, with Lawrence and writer Beatrix Christian setting up Stewart, his friends and job, and his relationship with Claire and his family, which has problems (she apparently left him early on in their marriage), but still seems to be going well. And the actual event of when Stewart finds the body is gut-wrenching. Lawrence and Christian also make it easy to understand, from Stewart’s point of view, why he was actually doing the police a favor by tying the girl’s body to the rocks (he didn’t want the current to carry her away, or ruin the body by having it on the ground where the flies or vultures could get to it). And without a word of dialogue, we see the unspoken agreement between Stewart and his friends to keep on going with their fishing trip, at least for another day. But while it’s easy to understand why the men, particularly Stewart, would feel compelled to defend their actions, Lawrence and Christian throw the film out of whack by suggesting Claire is the only person close to them to question it. You get a vague sense the film is trying to question how a community could hush up a crime, but it isn’t well dramatized. There’s also subplots thrown in – Carl and his wife Jude (Deborra Lee-Furness) have been taking care of their granddaughter since her mother die, and she struggles with her feelings – that seem shoehorned in, rather than being melded together like all the plots in Lantana did. As for the aborigines, it’s obvious Lawrence and Christian are trying to show the underbelly of racism that still exists in Australia towards Aborigines, and of course, that’s a commendable and ambitious goal. The problem is, while the dead girl gets to show some dimension before she gets killed (we see her singing along to a song in the car), the rest of the Maoris shown in the film are all one-dimensional. I realize they’re supporting characters in the story, but it’s as if Lawrence and Christian were afraid moviegoers wouldn’t care as much about the Aborigines if they had any unlikable characteristics, so they’re made noble in their suffering. This also pitches the film towards just being about white liberal guilt (and I say that as a white liberal).
I did say there was much to like. In addition to show the love in Claire and Stewart’s family, as well as the simmering tensions underneath (especially when Stewart’s mother comes to visit), Lawrence and Christian also do a good job when those tensions explode. A lot of that, of course, is due to the acting by Linney and Byrne. Linney has spent most of her film career playing brittle, intelligent women, so this role isn’t exactly a stretch for her. But she also shows warmth during her scenes with her son, and with her friends, and we can see how much it pains her no one else seems to be on her side. And she also shows us how, again, she doesn’t even know why this affects her so. Byrne likewise has played this part before, but he makes a believable match with Linney, and is able to communicate a lot with very little. And those visuals are striking without merely being picturesque. Jindabyne deserves credit for that, and its ambitions; I just wish it had been better.
Over 20 years ago, John Cusack had a small role in one of the better Stephen King adaptations, Stand by Me. Now, he takes the lead role in another King adaptation, 1408, based on one of King’s short stories. He plays Mike Enslin, a former novelist who now writes books that disprove supernatural phenomena. He gets an unsigned postcard one day telling him to stay out of room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in Manhattan. Naturally, this is like hanging out a welcome mat, and no matter what hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) tells Enslin about the room (in the history of the hotel, 56 people have died in the room, and no one lasts more than an hour there), Enslin insists on taking the room. Naturally, once he gets settled into the room, the shit hits the fan.
The first hour of 1408 is genuinely creepy without overdoing it. Director Mikael Hafstrom (Derailed) sets up tension nicely, and even throws in some humor (the room announces its intentions with authority with the clock radio blaring out the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun”). Although he is now over 40 years old, Cusack retains his boyish charm and wiseass personality, as well as his quiet vulnerability, and all of that serves him well here. And Jackson matches him in his few scenes, being intelligent and foreboding at the same time. But Hafstrom eventually drags down the story by throwing in not only too many obvious special effects scenes, but also too many plot reversals (to be fair, I never read the short story by King, so it may be his fault). It’s too bad to say this about a horror movie that tries to avoid the usual slasher pic route, but 1408 simply ends up being boring rather than scary and compelling.

New DVD releases September 25

2007-09-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday, I’m going to try and review the new DVD releases that I’ve seen for that week. This week, I’ve actually seen quite a few of them, so I’ll just get right too it.
I know there are people who’d rather have endless root canal work done than see another WWII film, but Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book is quite different. It may tell a similar story, of course. The heroine, Rachel, a Dutch Jew, has to flee when the Nazis invade. She barely survives when the group of refugees she tries to escape with by boat are brutally gunned down by the German army. She joins a resistance group, and disguises herself as a German singer so she can go undercover to gain revenge on the Nazi officer who carried out the slaughter. Complications arise when she not only falls in love with one of the Nazis, but also finds out there’s a traitor in the resistance.
That last part shows the method to Verhoeven’s madness here. We’re eager to hear stories of people who either fought against the Nazis (Schindler’s List) or somehow manages to survive them (The Pianist) – and I hope this doesn’t come off as a slight against those films, as I think both are brilliant – but the fact is, many if not most people in that situation either stood by and did nothing, or collaborated with them. Verhoeven is trying to show the lengths people had to go to in order to combat this (the controversial scene where Rachel must dye her own pubic hair is a good example – some saw this as Verhoeven being his usual overly salacious self, but it’s a fact most Jews who had to pass for something else would have to go this extra mile, and Verhoeven presents it as such) and survive. And some thought the so-called “good Nazi” (played by Sebastian Koch, who was the playwright in The Lives of Others) was carrying things too far, but he really wasn’t that good – he still ordered the capture and murders of innocent people, and he wasn’t so blinded by passion that he didn’t immediately guess Rachel was a spy.
I should mention here Black Book is also an entertaining and thrilling film, with some surprising twists along the way. But Verhoeven isn’t trying to make the sober-minded film people expected with this subject matter. He’s trying to show, once again, how WWII was, on many fronts, as ugly to fight as other wars have been. In some ways, it reminded me of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (released in the U.S. for the first time last year), which also dealt with resistance soldiers fighting traitors in their own country. Verhoeven’s movie is more sardonic, but just as powerful.
Judd Apatow, who once was known for having not just one, but two prematurely cancelled shows (Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared), is now considered one of the kings of comedy filmmakers. His latest, Knocked Up, is, as almost everyone knows by now, the story of what happens when Allison (Katherine Heigl), a newly promoted on-air correspondent for E! Network, and Ben (Seth Rogen), a slacker, improbably get together for one night, Allison becomes pregnant as a result, and both of them have to deal with it. Most people who talked about the movie (when not focusing on how much it made them laugh, if at all) wondered whether or not a woman like Allison would really get together, even for one night, with a guy like Ben, or they focused on how the movie was yet another demonstration on how movies duck the question of abortion. Few mentioned how Apatow is really cut from the same cloth as Kevin Smith (although he knows how to move a camera better) – both of them may revel in the fratboy-ish antics their heroes may get into, but they also know if there heroes want to get anywhere with women, they need to grow up, and the trouble is how few are willing to do just that. Apatow makes this point most clearly through the relationship between Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow’s real-life wife), Allison’s sister, and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). Debbie has become bitter at what she perceives is Pete’s arrested development, especially when she finds out a secret he’s been keeping from her. Ben, for his part, may be a slacker and a pothead, but what makes him endearing rather than annoying ultimately is his slow willingness to change to help Allison.
In case I made Knocked Up simply sound like a spoon-fed morality tale, let me add this is often a funny movie (although I agree with Mike White; Apatow does rely a little too much on humor that could be construed as homophobic), and Rogen shows he can be as talented in a lead role as he was in a supporting role on Freaks & Geeks (although it’s not a stretch, since his character had to go through a similar journey in the episode “The Little Things,” where he finds out his girlfriend was a hermaphrodite). Also, this is the first role I’ve liked Heigl in – freed from the teen angst of Roswell and the soapy antics of Grey’s Anatomy, she shows herself to be a talented comedienne. But the best reason to see the movie is Mann – she’s done little aside from playing the love interest in George of the Jungle, but she brings some unexpected depth here.
Apatow also produced Jake Kasdan’s The TV Set, which is subtler than Knocked Up, but just as funny. David Duchovny is Mike, a veteran TV writer who tries to get his show The Wexler Chronicles, a comedy series about a man who comes home after his brother commits suicide, on the air. The story is how it all goes wrong – how the actor who gets the lead role (Fran Kunz) mugs instead of acts, how one studio exec (Ioan Gruffud) enthusiastically supports Mike’s decision to keep the suicide, and then, just as enthusiastically, asks Mike to shoot a different version, and other ways the series gets chipped at because, as the head exec (Sigourney Weaver) says, “Originality scares me.” Kasdan (who directed episodes of Freaks & Geeks, so he knows from frustrating network experiences) makes it all the funnier by not having the characters yell, but deliver their broadsides at Mike by being overly cheerful and supportive (“We absolutely love this, but we have some concerns…”). Of course, none of this will be news to anyone who knows the process of getting a show on the air, but Kasdan knows the details of what he speaks, and by having the tone be more Christopher Guest than Robert Altman, he brings understanding to his characters. And Weaver is in top comic form, as is Judy Greer as Mike’s manager.
The one dud of the week is William Friedkin’s Bug, although it isn’t terrible. Ashley Judd reminded me she still had talent with last year’s little seen but wonderful Come Early Morning, and she’s just as good here playing a waitress trying to escape an abusive ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr.), only to end up with an unbalanced Iraq War vet (Michael Shannon). And the first half of the movie (adapted by Tracy Letts from his own play) sustains a creepy atmosphere. But the film gradually becomes ridiculous and overwrought, and therefore unwatchable. Judd’s character has a speech near then end that aims for horrifying and moving, but had me snickering instead.
Living and working in NYC for the last 6 ½ years, I’ve seen all kinds of things affecting our city, including racial tensions, a blackout, mayor candidates who run by dividing rather than uniting, the events of 9/11 making us live in fear, and so on. Substitute “serial killer” for terrorists, add the magnified soap opera of the New York Yankees (much more pronounced then), and you’ve got the summer of 1977. The Bronx is Burning, the ESPN miniseries arriving today on DVD, does a fairly good job capturing at least the Yankee soap opera. The blackout and mayoral race are shown mainly through archival footage, and the hunt for the infamous “Son of Sam” killer, although well acted (particularly by Stephen Lang as a police lieutenant), seems shoehorned in. But the baseball stories make it all worth watching. The Yankees of 1977 were a clash of three big egos – owner George Steinbrenner (Oliver Platt), manager Billy Martin (John Turturro), and star Reggie Jackson (Daniel Sunjata). About the only thing they all agreed on is they all wanted the Yankees to win the World Series after getting swept by the Cincinnati Reds the previous year. Steinbrenner wanted Jackson not only because he thought he would help the Yankees win the Series, but also because he thought Jackson would bring in lots of fans and attention. Martin wanted another right-handed hitter, instead of the left-handed Jackson, and he thought Jackson would be another threat to his control of the team. A former teammate said of Jackson, “There isn’t enough mustard in the world to cover that hot dog,” and Jackson seemed to do little to dispel that when the June issue of Sport magazine quoted him as saying as far as the Yankees were concerned, he was “the straw that stirred the drink.” (To this day, Jackson denies ever saying this).
All three lead actors are terrific. Turturro is, of course, much taller than Martin was (Martin always felt slighted because of his height), but as he did when he played Howard Cosell in Monday Night Mayhem, he captures Martin’s brashness and vulnerability. Steinbrenner was a spoiled rich kid who had no idea how to run a team, but did have a love for the game, and wasn’t afraid to spend money to win. Platt shows all that, and, as usual, gives a very physical performance. Many viewers thought Sunjata didn’t have the heft for the role of Jackson, but I thought he was fine. Jackson was a hot dog, but he was also one of the most intelligent players around, and Sunjata does demonstrate that. The other players and coaches do get short shrift, though Erik Jensen bears a frightening resemblance to Thurman Munson, and Joe Grifasi goes past the usual Yogi Berra clichés to play Berra as someone Martin was always able to depend on. After his botched movie version of The Avengers, I never thought I’d like Jeremiah Chechik again, but he stages the baseball stories with flair here (he directed all seven episodes, and exec-produced the series). The miniseries does stall when it mostly uses archive footage, but it’s still a thrill to watch Jackson hit his 3 homers in the final game of the Series. In baseball terms, The Bronx is Burning scores a stand-up double.

Why Movies Matter

2007-09-25T00:04:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, the TV preview issue of Entertainment Weekly featured an interview with Sally Field and Rachel Griffiths, two of the stars of ABC’s drama series Brothers and Sisters. Most of it was what you’d expect, but there was a telling moment when the interviewer asked both of them how the show would affect their film careers, and neither of them cared; Field even talked of film work as standing around and not acting. The subtext, of course, was plain to see; these are award-winning (in Field’s case, twice) or award-nominated (Griffiths) film actresses who, essentially, were turning their backs on film because TV was more fulfilling, and not just because film had turned its back on them. Now, one might argue this is simply the product of ageism and sexism, except it’s not just women who are feeling this way. Jason Isaacs, for example, is part of one of the most lucrative franchises in movie history – the Harry Potter movies – and yet he said in an interview that he took the Showtime drama series Brotherhood because it allowed him to play a three-dimensional character, which he said he didn’t get to do in movies. Unlike Field and Griffiths, Isaacs isn’t turning his back on movies – there are, after all, two more Harry Potter movies to go, and his character figures in one of them – but he’s clearly getting more out of TV.
The fact television has grown beyond being the ugly stepchild of movies, of course, has hardly been news for the last few years. It’s been no secret that the best TV right now – Brotherhood, Weeds, and my personal favorite, The Wire – has been better than 90% of the movies out there now (and in case that brands me as a TV snob, let me also add that such “low-brow” fare as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars is also more entertaining and fulfilling than most so-called entertaining movies). Field, Griffiths and Isaacs aren’t the only actors to find more freedom on TV, network or cable, than movies. And while as recently as 10 years ago, directors and/or producers like David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Robert Altman (Gun) and Barry Levinson (Homicide: Life on the Street) could count on plenty of network interference and/or indifference, today the strong showrunners can count on more creative freedom from TV studios than movie studios. All of this, like I said, comes as no surprise to those following movies and TV for the last several years. I even wrote something similar to this in a fanzine almost 15 years ago, though I miscalculated somewhat; at the time, when HBO was turning out stellar made-for-cable movies such as Barbarians at the Gate, And the Band Played On, and Doomsday Gun (and Showtime, then HBO’s ugly stepchild, even made The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom), I thought TV would compete with movies over movies, not with their own TV shows over movies. And now some are feeling triumphant over the fact TV is winning over movies, but I’m not one of them.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ll take good art wherever I can get it (I’m using art in a general term to mean any of the so-called performing arts), and if a great episode of a TV show can give me a feeling similar to what I felt when watching The Godfather Part II the first time, or listening to Quadrophenia the first time, or reading The Sun Also Rises the first time, I’m all for it. And it could be argued TV supplanting movies as an art form is simply the natural evolution of things. And in doing what it does best, TV is demonstrating what it can do better than movies can (developing a character, telling an ensemble story). And finally, the fact there’s still crap, formulaic TV around doesn’t negate what TV has accomplished – after all, no movie lover can deny there have been enough crap movies made to fertilize several thousand gardens.
But I feel a special connection to movies. I grew up with them in a way I never grew up with TV (of course, this was all pre-Internet, but still). When we first got a videodisc player (think of them as the movie equivalent of record players), my father would bring home a new movie every night (or it seemed like that) for us to watch. Sure, they were mostly old movies (with only a few exceptions, my father didn’t like movies made after 1965 or so), but they instilled a love of movies that has lasted in me to this day. And then I started going to the movies on my own – the summer before my sophomore year in college, I saw 17 movies in the theater, and the year after that, 18. And it was the big hits like No Way Out and A Fish Called Wanda, not the “esoteric” stuff like the latest Kubrick (well, okay, I did see Full Metal Jacket in the theater, but you get the idea). And I’ve been going, with others or alone, ever since.
I bring up the “big hits” line because, as a critic (albeit an amateur one), I’ve either been accused, either in general terms or specific terms, of only liking the “esoteric” stuff, and being asked, “Don’t you just go to movies to enjoy yourself?” I find that question irritating, because I always go to the movies in hope that I’ll enjoy myself on some level. It’s just what I enjoy now is different than what I enjoyed back then, in many ways. Part of that is the natural progression of growing up, and part of that is the natural progression of seeing a lot of movies. But there’s more to that as well. I am not a huge fan of Dead Poets Society, but there’s one scene in the movie that always resonates with me. It’s the scene where Professor Keating (Robin Williams) has his students tear out the introduction to their poetry books, not just because the art of poetry is described in such a pedantic manner, but also because he thinks poetry matters for much more, as he goes on to explain:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Substitute “movies” for “poetry” and you’ll have an idea how I feel about them. Yes, it sounds pretentious, but I honestly couldn’t care less. Movies are an art form. Let me repeat that. Movies are an art form. Yes, movies can and should be entertaining – few movies were as purely entertaining this year as Hot Fuzz. And yes, movies, like any other art form, depend on money, which depends on putting people in the seats. But there’s no reason a movie can’t be made just to entertain and still have an intelligent plot, intelligent dialogue, and well-written, three-dimensional characters. There’s no reason a movie can’t be entertain and still confront the world we live in, or our lives on this earth, in some way. And there’s no reason to treat movies as a product in the same way as you would a tube of toothpaste (or to paraphrase Dead Poets Society again, we’re not talking about laying pipe, we’re talking about movies); as purely a product to be sold like anything else.
And the reason why movies matter to me, and to others I suspect, is no matter how many bad movies get made, there are always movies that do touch the soul, confront the world around them, or are simply well-crafted on the highest level. At the end of almost every year, I still have problems weeding down my top 10 list for that year because there are more than enough films to qualify. Yes, when it’s good, TV can have deeper characters and more complex and satisfying storylines. But movies can still bring the goods. And it’s still a relatively young format. There are more good movies to be made, and I, for one, hope I’m not the only one eager to see what they are.
Coda: this essay talked about movies on a purely artistic level, and not the experience of actually going to see one, but that is also worth touching on. There are all kinds of legitimate complaints to be made about going to see a movie today: the cost, the condition of the theater, the endless commercials, the rude behavior of others at the movies, and so on. And thanks to Internet communities, viewing parties, and the like, TV has also replicated, in part, the experience of actually going to the movies, and you don’t have to spend as much money. But there’s still nothing like seeing a good movie on a big screen with an audience that’s as appreciative as you are.