Sweeney Todd

One would assume that Tim Burton would be the perfect choice to bring Steven Sondheim's horror-musical "Sweeney Todd" to the big screen, but, though stylish, the end result is not particularly imaginative. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are made up to look ghoulish and overcast Victorian London looks right out of "Heart of Darkness," but, considering that the play is about a vengeful barber who slays his customers so that the pie-shop proprietress below can have meat for her pastries, this all seems like playing it straight. The movie is not very evenly-plotted either; it moves at a surprisingly lax pace until the third act, which is so fast that it seems truncated.

There are, however, enough good qualities to keep the movie perky and enjoyable. Alan Rickman relishes being an upper-crust villain, even if the important dynamic between his character and Todd is underdeveloped; Carter plays her Cockney as wonderfully dubious--like her pies, she's sweet and tasty, but full of bad things, our moral compass gone haywire; and Sacha Baron Cohen gives the movie a hammy lift, although, like Rickman, he's not around for long enough. Depp is okay--he channels Todd's gloom in the talking parts, but there's not much else he can get out of the single-minded barber. He gives singing the old college try, but seems to be nervously looking about for direction while doing so. And, as a grubby sailor that Todd's daughter inexplicably falls for, Jamie Campbell Bower is plopped down and he thuds into his scenes as though edited in from another movie. But, even if "Sweeney Todd" is not an expert film, it's an agreeable potboiler--and, because Burton transcends the film with an elegant final image, I left the film with some degree of satisfaction.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is almost as long as its title, but it may be the most valiant attempt at truly literary filmmaking in a while. It is a film that earns its elegantly archaic photography (shot by Roger Deakins, the Coen Brothers’ frequent cohort) and, perhaps, its slow deliberation over each and every frame. Although the setting is long past—in what remained of the Old West by the eighteen-eighties—the movie goes beyond the easy acceptance it could have had as simply another handsome period piece; the movie is surprisingly relevant today.

The film opens with the last train robbery perpetrated by the James gang. It is here that Deakins is at his most indulgent; the dreamlike, fuzzy-edged cinematography is at an apex here, pairing the sumptuousness of Terrence Malick films with the blurry decay of old photographs. Bob Ford (Casey Affleck), an awkward nineteen-year-old raised on Jesse James (Brad Pitt) dime-novels, insists that he take part in the venture. Jesse’s father—and later his wife—get the creeps from the naïve teenager, but the boy is admitted, nonetheless, and, on the train, he gets his first taste of Jesse’s violent temper: an engineer who refuses to kneel down before the bandit is bludgeoned mercilessly.

Bob never gains the respect of the rest of the gang, which is picked off one-by-one by Jesse for their acts of treason against him. By the end, only Bob and his dim-witted older brother, Charley (Sam Rockwell), remain. Bob idolizes Jesse, but he’s like a fanboy who meets William Shatner and then realizes that the starship Enterprise has never lifted off the ground. His first-hand experience is nothing like the cheap romances that he still keeps hidden in a shoe box under his bed. The true Jesse James is lunatically violent and paranoid; in one scene, he almost tears off a young boy’s ear when pumping him for information, but, by covering his mouth, never even gives the boy an opportunity to reply. The movie, however, has the decency to not peg the icon as simply a raging monster; at the end of the scene, the celebrated outlaw breaks down and cries.

The film is just as much Bob’s as Jesse’s, though. Charley forces an anecdote out of his brother about the long list of comparisons Bob has compiled between himself and Jesse; when his hero—who constantly tests his minions’ allegiance—mocks him for this, the railway bandit’s fate is sealed. The titular assassination makes the perpetrator as well-known as the victim—just as he always dreamed—but his celebrity is tinged with infamy and allegations of cowardice. Jesse James, the overly-romanticized brute, is immortalized as a folk hero; his slayer becomes a folk villain.

It is either remarkable fortune or the sign of pure genius that Brad Pitt, arguably today’s most established male star, performs the role of an over-hyped tabloid celebrity of yesteryear. He does not need to be Brando; as the mercurial, mysterious James, he needs his star’s presence—and, costumed in black and sporting the smile of a charming roué, he gives James the larger-than-life power that made him a myth. (In a nod to one of James’s successors, he slips into an impersonation of Warren Beatty’s Clyde Barrow from time to time.) But he culls the right degree of sensitivity, too, in a much practiced performance. Everything that James does is minutely tooled; he’s blasé about his celebrity, but thrives on living up to his reputation. His alpha-male instinct for self-protection eventually drives him mad and Pitt plays James as a troubled existentialist, whose unpredictable bursts of malice are intertwined with moody desperation. James’s fate has the weight a tragic hero’s; his own eccentricities lead to his downfall and the lives around him collapse like dominoes.

Though still a relative unknown—despite his big brother—Affleck will hopefully not be overshadowed. He mumbles through his role like the emo, misunderstood youngster that Bob essentially is, but his antisocial creepiness is made to be very sympathetic. He teeters on having a gay crush on James, which is an effective piece of playing because of Affleck’s internalization; his inability to conflate James the Legend, who he loves, with James the Man, who he fears, is what makes him so inarticulate. Although Bob learns his lesson to a degree, society never reconciles the murderer with their myth; this fatal flaw is Bob’s downfall. As his yokel brother, Rockwell shows the same ability to curry the audience’s good will, but uses a different technique. Rockwell’s sharp, nervous features make Charley seem consistently on the verge of breaking down. He’s someone who, unlike James, cannot mask the high volume of thoughts sputtering in his brain. His childlike inability to process information makes one fear for his safety throughout the picture; he seems like a defenseless sheep pitted against James’s wolf.

Perhaps because the director and screenwriter, Andrew Dominik, is a New Zealander—and not an American—he has a more objective understanding of a celebrity culture that is American in origin. An American may be more apt to turn this material into a garish satire, but Dominik is thoughtful enough to make his characters sufficiently imperfect and three-dimensional to inspire empathy and has enough restraint to let his commentary slip in as subtext. The movie’s main problems occur when it is too obvious and self-conscious; Dominik piles on too much redundant exposition in the voice-over and has a tendency to let shots linger for an added meaning that simply isn’t there. He does, however, let little things—like warped glass panes—bubble up with open metaphors and, for a sophomore director (his first film was an Australian movie that I’ve never heard of), that is a significant gesture of enlightened respect for the audience. He’s got a feel for dialogue, too. I’m not sure how much credit is due to Ron Hansen, who authored the novel, but the script captures the duplicitous dialect of Southern chivalry when not strewn with meaning-pounders. Dominik even slips in some subtle malapropisms, which are quite welcome in a movie that is largely devoid of humor.

“The Assassination of Jesse James” is not quite poetry; Dominik is far too controlling. Every emotion, every blink, is planned and I wouldn’t be surprised if the director required fifty takes for the simplest shots. Calculation can be stifling in movies—and yes, “The Assassination of Jesse James” is indeed calculated. But it’s set apart by an august sympathy behind the painstaking craftsmanship. The director may have O.C.D., but he imparts on his movie a warmth that keeps one from feeling cramped by the frostbitten setting. He makes a statement without implicating the audience or our society; Dominik allows us to know his characters intimately and his movie laments their plight. He shows that romanticization can be a façade, but romanticizes about the America of frontier times like a child enraptured by his history class. Dominik remains skeptical without insulting our intelligence or stepping on our dreams.

So, even though one may get weary at a lengthy epilogue that makes one feel the movie’s 160 minute runtime, “The Assassination of Jesse James” is a remarkably insightful, empathic and strikingly-beautiful film. If this isn’t nominated for Best Picture, we’re in for the best Christmas movie season in decades.

No Country for Old Men

[Spoiler Alert!]

Until the end credits, there isn't one bar of music in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men." In fact, the bulk of the first third of the film is as visually empty as the soundtrack; it's Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas, 1980: beautiful in it's bleakness--untamed, unpopulated. The photography, by the brothers' longtime associate, Roger Deakins, is always sumptuous, but it works better here than in most of their films; this film needs to be implacably picturesque and distant--the world of this movie isn't quite real, not quite full.

The story follows around Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who, on a solitary hunting trip, stumbles on the remains of a mass execution of drug dealers in the desert. We never figure out much about them--and neither do the police--but they were certainly the victims of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a merciless killing machine whose ties with the victims are never made clear. Moss is the kind of man who un-self-consciously sees himself as a modern day cowboy, but, in actuality, is just a Vietnam vet living in a trailer park. He is so deadpan that his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), doesn't believe him when he says off-handedly that the valise he's brought back from his hunting expedition is loaded with cash. Moss does not realize, however, that his cash came equipped with a tracking device and, after Carla Jean is safely away with her batty mother, he finds himself stuck playing cat-and-mouse with Chigurh. Though he's no Rambo, the vet is resourceful; and his laconic understatement makes him the perfect foil for Chigurh, the latest word in sardonically unfeeling inhumanity. While not perfect, Llewellyn is scrappy and not easily frightened; he acts the way we'd like to think we would in the face of robotic evil.

And then he's killed off.

As the trusty old sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones enters into the movie relatively late. Dealing only with Carla Jean, he's almost like a bystander; he's never directly involved in the A-plot, but only watches from afar. Jones' character is a particular specialty of the Coens--like Frances McDormand's cop in "Fargo," he's old-fashioned, glib and utterly straightforward. On the surface he may seem like a typical Tommy Lee Jones part, too--his Man in Black without the zazz--but he's not. Like the rest of the Texans here, he's dry and laconic, yet older enough to think he's seen it all--but he's never seen this. In the beginning, his understatement makes him seem as dead as the deathly flat landscape, but he's not; something dies in him later on. (And Jones lays it to rest gracefully.) Like all cowboy heroes, he has to be internalized and stoic, but he, like Llewellyn, is out of his league. Unfortunately, that seems more troublesome than any of the graphic murders Chigurh commits; are the Coens really saying that mechanized evil (a singleminded clockwork orange) has rendered traditional American goodness obsolete? This apocalyptic revelation leads Bell--a sheriff so old and craggy that the bags under his eyes couldn't be taken as carry-on--to finally retire.

One may be lead to think that "No Country for Old Men" is a tract about evil, but it's not. The evil embodied by Bardem is rarified to the point of absurdity. He and his motivations are more primitive than any of the other characters. I can only recall one shot from the entire movie that might lead one to believe that Chigurh is layered--his reaction to Llewellyn’s actually having the gumption to fight back. Bardem's portrayal is quietly effective, but one-note; he's too much of an allegory to be believable. One can surmise from "A Clockwork Orange" how the evil inside of Alex has come to a boil, but Chigurh lacks a past or even a context. He's menacing, but too far removed from the reality of evil to be rationally feared. The Coens are talented enough to ratchet up the suspense in ways that befit such a proficient thriller, but Chigurh is a monster better suited for horror films.

The movie is more accurately about fate than evil; it is a significantly more powerful force in this world. Much of this fatalism is probably due to Western-gothic writer Cormac McCarthy, on whose story this movie is based; but that's not to say that the Coens haven't had a long and solid history of fatalism in their movies. Criminals, in particular, seem to lack control over their destinies--as in "The Big Lebowski" or "Fargo," crimes are always being botched by imperfect miscreants. In "Barton Fink," John Tuturro's screenwriter is entrapped by the old Hollywood system. There, however, the hero's flaws and missteps partly brought him to his downfall; here, Llewellyn only makes one mistake--being bold enough to take a stand against Chigurh. Unlike several minor characters, Llewellyn meets his demise off-screen; the motivation behind that device is obscure, but ultimately cruel--he never even had a chance.

Fortunately, the Coens are smart enough filmmakers to allow room for caveats. There is some semblance of love and compassion and human feeling here, even if it's piled under layers of toast-dry Texan drawl. And, though defeated, Bell ends the movie on a note of tentative faith; maybe he's not been destroyed after all.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

There's so much to say about this Oscar-sweeping early showcase of future stars (Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif, et al), but, because it has probably already been said, I'll just be satisfied with recommending that you frame "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by looking at its context. Made in 1975 and set in 1963 (right after Ken Kesey's book came out), the story is not only sympathetic to victims of the old psychiatric institution, but is part of a larger framework of people bucking against the system. Jack Nicholson's McMurphy is no revolutionary--in fact, he's really just a conscientious ne'er-do-well--but he sees through the unfairness of the system, as embodied by the stuffy, obstinate Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher, unfortunately in her largest role to date), and refuses to be a sheep. It's in the triumph-of-the-human-spirit vein, but Milos Forman treats it just right; it ends on a hopeful note and never gets sappy or bombastic. It's a great film from a great time for films.

I'm Not There

In one of the key scenes of "I'm Not There," one of the five quasi-Bob Dylans (the primary one, Cate Blanchett) ducks the queries of a British reporter (Bruce Greenwood) with layers upon layers of bullshit. Unfortunately, that's the closest you get to him--by being so adamant about not being pigeon-holed, he becomes a flat character and, though Dylan is not exonerated for behaving so arrogantly, the reporter is penalized for asking straightforward questions. Even if this jives with the real Dylan's behavior (as I'm told is shown in the 1966 D.A. Pennebaker documentary, "Don't Look Back"), it's incredibly unsatisfying, especially in a fiction film. It's a shame, too, because there's a lot commendable in this movie. The director, Todd Haynes, successfully combines three strands of the folk singer--and two abstracts: Heath Ledger as an actor who played a singer like Dylan and Richard Gere as Billy the Kid--without leaving the audience confused.

The Blanchett part, the heart of the movie, is particularly good. She's great in an off-hand, here-for-the-ride type way and David Cross makes a brilliantly absurd Ginsberg; even the goofiness--stylistic cues and references to "A Hard Day's Night," "Masculin Féminin" and "8 1/2"--works as a kind of wacky pastiche of Swinging London. Some of it, however, is terribly blah: Heath Ledger's divorce melodrama does not only seem to not pertain to Dylan, it seems like it belongs to a lamer movie. (One scene, where he turns chauvinist-pig and hippie sell-out, however, is right on.) But the movie throws in heavy-handed symbols (like Billy the Kid seeing footage of L.B.J. and Nam flash across the Old West landscape) which wouldn't work even if they weren't counter to the movie's resistance to paint a fuller picture of Dylan. It's a smart, proficient and stylish movie, but it wants to answer questions and then refuses to. To be fair, I can't count myself as anything more than a casual fan of the musician, but even if "I'm Not There" (a fitting title) reflects his real attitudes, it seems like a cheat. Dylan obviously means to say something in his music; if he denies that, he's got more problems than this movie suggests.

The Birds

Because I used to dismiss "The Birds" as simply Hitchcock at his hokiest, I was surprised how much I liked the film when I rewatched it recently. The love story is both lame and ridiculous; Rod Taylor is a lawyer and Melanie (Tippi Hendren) is a spoiled heiress and a prankster--but really they're both squares. Of course, Taylor's mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), is a salty old widow who distrusts his suitors and fears abandonment. And we're given an erstwhile lover of Taylor's who has relocated herself to Bodega Bay--the Northern California town that becomes the birds' prey--even though she and the attorney are now "just friends." Worst of all, Taylor's eleven-year-old sister (who begs the question, how old is Taylor supposed to be?) is terribly precocious and disturbingly fond of Melanie. This soggy subplot is either hackneyed soap opera or a stroke of genius: the random onslaught of the aviary exposes how trite these unbelievable stock characters are. One character mentions Oedipus in reference to Taylor's relationship with his mother; later on, Lydia finds a victim of a bird attack whose eyes have been pecked out.

Usually Hitchcock's famous "maguffin" was negligible (i.e. nuclear plans in "Notorious," stolen information in "North by Northwest") and the romance was at the heart of the flick; here, it's the other way around. However, given the amount of screen time devoted to the boy-meets-girl story and the fact that a few scenes--particularly a monologue given by Tandy in bed--are particularly well-acted, it's hard to believe that a big part of Hitchcock did not buy into the old movie treacle. Regardless, there's some brilliant Soviet-style editing and Hitchcock's decision to not have any music on the soundtrack--in lieu of electronic bird noises--is quite effectively chilly, despite the fact that he sacrificed what could have been another great Bernard Herrmann score in order to attain it. Plus, aside from the silly, irrational plot (both the birds and the melodrama) there are some explicitly funny scenes, such as an exchange between a miserly old ornithologist and a casual harbinger of the apocalypse at a café. (This may lead some to read a green, anti-industrialization message into the movie, but I think it's wiser to see it as Biblical hokum meant to ratchet up the confusion and terror.) In many ways, this movie is a precursor to "Jaws," which was still twelve years away.

Monsieur Verdoux

Charlie Chaplin plays anything but a tramp in "Monsieur Verdoux." The story (the idea for which is credited to Orson Welles) involves a French bank clerk who, after being laid off at the onset of the Great Depression, murders an array of old dames that he courts in order for his beloved family to live in modest comfort. While we may not spend much time with his wife and son, the implication that they are a happy, normal family--an enlightened one, perhaps, as they are vegetarians (couldn't have been too common in nineteen-thirties France)--is clear.

Verdoux can kill because he's an incredible cynic, or, rather, he's become one after having watched the world dissolve around him; his pragmatism, after all, is forged out of a traditionalist's notion of love. One almost wants to see a bit more tenderness--when his family dies off-screen, Chaplin misses an extraordinary opportunity to exhibit what must have been a crucial moment for his character--but one also appreciates the black comedy and the snippets of slapstick that Chaplin was still able to pull off (he was 58 at the time).

There's a wild farcicality in the tone; but the wry deadpan of our proto-Hannibal Lecter hero never undercuts the notion that murder is bad. The ambiguity is rich and textured and doesn't really go overboard because of its slick Old Hollywood shell. The movie is flawed--Chaplin gets a little too preachy at the end and his rendering of France is not particularly believable--but "Monsieur Verdoux" hasn't lost its edge.

The Warriors

Walter Hill says his cult classic "The Warriors" is about courage, but it certainly isn't about heroism. In retrospect, the Warriors themselves are hardly distinguishable from one another except that the one that's arrested is lewd and the one who proclaims himself leader is (almost parodistically) as plain as toast, the butter being his stagnant, pretty boy hairdo. They aren't really heroes in either the Greek sense or the comic book sense; they, like the rest of the gangs that they mingle with in the course of this unforgiving night, just want to survive and maintain a grip on their turf. Their blandness or fungibility may actually be key; the movie is not about them, it's about what happens to them--or, rather, how it happens to them.

Hill's not-too-distant future isn't a product of pessimism like Kubrick's ("A Clockwork Orange") or Ridley Scott's ("Blade Runner"); in fact it's the product of no foresight or pretense to such at all. It's more of a fantasy for kids who were becoming nauseated by disco and starting to turn to punk and I think the proto-punk nihilism is what continues to be appealing to young people today, twenty-eight years after the movie's release. It's not as affectless as it seems, because, as it is for so many teens, the nihilism here is just a cover for a small-minded, but universal, code of honor. The movie kind of ridicules the traditional notion of the hero wanting more out of life than his petty brushes with gangsters, but, in a quiet way, it doesn't. It knows that the kids in the audience wouldn't have admitted to enjoying that, so it gave the hormone-inflicted pre-emo audience what it consciously demanded: rock, sex and fighting. The flick is cut expertly to the jock-rock (provided mostly by Joe Walsh) and slummy late-seventies New York looks demonic in seedy, after-hours neon and fluorescent lighting that looks like "American Graffiti" growing up into "Pulp Fiction." It's the New York of "Taxi Driver," but chillier, emptier, more industrial and less fleshy. It's corrupt in a more juvenile way. Only the imaginatively-themed gangs and the coppers in pursuit are out at this late hour--which is, consciously, well past the teenie bopper audience's bedtime--and anybody else on the scene (like two yuppie couples coming home from a disco) is made to know that they do not belong.

To me, "The Warriors" is power-pop kitsch equal to other movies overly-evocative of their eras such as "Rebel Without a Cause," "Easy Rider," "Saturday Night Fever" and "Scarface." It's fun in a silly, absurd, goofball kind of way, but it's not altogether witless. When David Patrick Kelly famously jeers, "War-riors, come out and play-ay," you know that he knows the coke-headed absurdity of it all.

Robocop

"Robocop" is Paul Verhoeven's nice little satire of corporatization. It's witty and affably small for a movie of its type, but it's also very thin. The Detroit slum villains (who are, notably, forty-year-old white men) are lusciously sadistic like the comic book bad guys they are supposedly meant to reflect, but the heroes (when stripped of their metal chasis) aren't particularly interesting. Peter Weller is a good, straight-man satirist when his vocoder is in place, but his partner in the police force, played by Nancy Allen, has the faintness of a plot device. Some of the framework of the plot is likewise shoddy, but it's mostly swept underneath the carpet of clever direction and fluky action sequences. The vaguely overcast cyberpunk atmosphere is gloomy, but it's a tasty little action confection that's very easy to swallow.

Talk to Me / Inland Empire

Talk to Me – August 22, 2007

Even if, after a certain point, "Talk to Me" becomes utterly predictable, there are certain things that the movie gets very right. First of all, the center of this artist biopic is not a celebrity on the level of Johnny Cash or Ray Charles; Petey Green (Don Cheadle) is not in the pop mainstream and therefore most of us cannot bring our celebrity-worship of him into the theater and turn his life into an epic. Green was a local-level celebrity for the Washington D.C. listeners of his morning radio show which gave a voice to the concerns of Civil Rights era blacks. That's an easy storyline to turn messagey and drench with a syrup of lamentation for the good old days of protest and progress and optimism. But Kasi Lemmons, the director, never overplays the period or takes cheap shots at racists or reactionaries. Yes, Green's fashions may lead one to believe that this is an ill-conceived sequel to "The Ladies Man," but Don Cheadle plays him with such scrappy vitality that one can believe that he'd wear that clothing and one knows why. One could also believe that he'd peg WOL-AM executive and future manager Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as an Uncle Tom or a Sidney Poitier-wannabe. But Ejiofor is convincing, too - he's wearing a conservative gray suit because he doesn't have Green's unrestricted mouth. He is not a coward or reactionary, though, and neither are his sententious white coworkers (Martin Sheen as the eldest and best-played among them). Ejiofor was in "Inside Man" and "Children of Men," but I hardly remember him in the latter and not at all in the former, which I watched recently. I do remember him, though, in "Kinky Boots" (yes, I saw "Kinky Boots") where he gave a sweetly flamboyant performance as a transvestite. It may not have been enough to have transcended that movie, which wasn't very good, but, considering his performance in "Talk to Me" it shows how wonderfully talented and diverse a performer he is and, I hope, continues profitably to be. Eventually, the plot clicks (at an accelerated pace) through every big and expected cliché - alcoholism, marital infidelity, not wanting to make it to the top despite his manager's pushiness, the fight between he and Hughes that ensues, Green's wife (Taraji P. Henson) facilitating a making-up between them and so on. But the movie is worth seeing if only for the sequence surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, which is so evocative that it gives new meaning to its significance for someone like me who did not live through it. And there's no tabloid gush to it at all.

Inland Empire – August 22, 2007

What has happened to David Lynch? I'm loath to say that sometimes it may be best for an artist to be restricted by producers and executives because, in this self-distributed venture, Lynch has left the planet. "Inland Empire" makes "Eraserhead" or "Mulholland Drive" or even "Lost Highway" look like "Just My Luck" because it hasn't the slightest degree of cohesion. The one-day-at-a-time shooting technique is enjoyable to no one but those involved and probably wasn't too enjoyable for Laura Dern who spends three hours panting and pouting and spewing dialogue into dead ends. In the movie, she's a big-time Hollywood actress taking on a doomed role - the actress in the original version of the movie-within-the-movie (which is a paltry imitation of any studio film made since 1960) was murdered. After some semblance of a plot has been promisingly established, our Alice is irrevocably dropped off in Wonderland, but, the problem is, there wasn't even a hole. Themes like time and identity are alluded to, but Dern (and everyone else) has so many doppelgangers that one loses track of who the real Dern is--and so do her characters.

Exploration of schizophrenia is nothing new to movies and certainly not to Lynch, but who cares if a character is losing her personality if her personality is uninteresting to begin with. And with no anchor personality, the tension and thriller aspects of the film become nullified. Loss of identity and the fulfillment of prophecy are distilled into an interdimensional, inter-temporal chase sequence that lacks bite because there are too many close-ups and reaction shots and unrelated clues and dark hallways. And only a few scenes, like those of banal bunny rabbits in a drab sitcom and whores dancing to "The Loco-Motion" and creepy floating faces, remind you that this is even a David Lynch film. He seems to be the same affable, well-meaning and cheerfully wacky goofball that he's always been, but "Inland Empire" hardly reflects that. Part of what made his surrealism work was his humor - the world view that self-consciously mixes Boy Scout honor with an unfiltered macabre curiosity. That, balanced with a certain romanticism, dreaminess and the sensibilities of both an expert storyteller and an abstract painter, is what makes Lynch's best films great. It's a very precise mixture: too much of one element can result in good but lesser pictures ("Wild at Heart" and "Lost Highway"); too little of either result in this.

I admit that I admire the "experiment" - this was shot on digital video (which you get used to but seems terribly like an MTV reality show at first) and more-or-less improvised. To be able to do that is any filmmaker's dream and one as accomplished as Lynch's right, but it lacks an overriding idea, vision, premise or theme. Experimental movies may not need plots, but they need something stronger than an assortment of motifs; in the very least there should be stark images that invoke ideas and emotions beyond "how much longer until this is over?" I could be wrong; Lynch could have had some mystical epiphany in the editing room or while directing Laura Dern (who gives a strong and diverse performance but is the only one allowed enough screen time and transparency to do so) to be terrified by this or that. If there is one, though, it's denser a thought and less pleasant a trip than it has ever been before. I want the old David Lynch back and I hope he's back soon.

Lost Highway / Inside Man

Lost Highway – August 14, 2007

I guess every director has to do a film noir just like they have to do a bank heist picture. One could say that Kyle MacLachlan's detective work in "Blue Velvet" was noir, but it was Nancy Drew compared to "Lost Highway." But even this is atypical; it's not the cynical, mechanical wiseacre mysteries of the forties which were legitimized by the love story at the center - "Lost Highway" is a modern shmuck's hallucinations tempered by old movies. It's Lynch using familiar old clichés to translate his perpetual Freudian urges. It's somewhat limiting, but perhaps necessary - unlike with "Blue Velvet" (or even "Eraserhead"), the nightmare here is not merely cryptic, but altogether incomprehensible. His next film, "Mulholland Drive," didn't need that genre crux and it had Lynch's sanity-maintaining humor and lucid originality. "Lost Highway" is more like someone trying to put last night's bad dream to paper before he forgets it entirely; the pieces don't fit no matter how much you cram them together with your therapist. But beside the underwritten main characters and overblown side ones (Robert Loggia) or their insistence on being amorphous, there's an eerie mood that's heightened; this ain't your daddy's Lynchian. Milquetoast Bill Pullman/Balthazar Getty's home is penetrated, girl is untrustworthy, their loved ones disappear in edits and their own lives have giant blank spaces in them. The cautious freshman criminals of the old noirs question their identity here and become terribly vulnerable - pawns in sex, at home and at work. It's existential, metaphysical bullshit, but one's illogical center finds itself captive to the four AM mood. And with Robert Blake as he is here, this has the most dread-filled (NOT dreadful) horror film feel since "The Shining."

Inside Man – August 10, 2007

Spike Lee's long but satisfying bank heist thriller is, if not as good as "Dog Day Afternoon" (which it may very well be), a deserving follower of its tradition. This time it's anti-establishment not because the robbers become populist heroes, but because it's the Wall Street stuffed-shirts and corrupt players - embodied by smarmy Jodie Foster and iffy Christopher Plummer - as bad guys. The movie's a big jigsaw puzzle - chronology and semantics and even movie references are mixed around in a soup of obfuscation swam in by flavorful characters played at the height of their actors' careers. The only piece that’s glaringly absent is the bank robber (Clive Owen) whose motivation and background are uncertain. How did he know of the movie's core mystery? Not even detective Denzel tries very hard to figure that out. One should have a little difficulty accepting him as simply a vigilante super-genius. Despite that flaw and though there may be nothing particularly novel about this film, which is one of many in a seemingly immortal genre, "Inside Man" is nevertheless an excellent and intelligent pastime.

Boston Legal

“Boston Legal” – August 4, 2007

I haven’t watched much TV lately, so “Boston Legal” is a new discovery and a new personal favorite. It’s a fantastical dramedy about the most upscale of upscale attorneys and the glitz and glamour of their station and lifestyle is for men what “Sex in the City” probably amounted to for women. These lawyers are petty, teetering-on-scrupulous perverts who’ll have sex with everything that moves and everything that moves in their fantasy version of Boston (or Los Angeles, or wherever else they have branches) is utterly sexy. Even the perfunctory law portion is as “ripped from the headlines” as “Law and Order”; it’s all distilled into swallowable capsules to make room for everyone’s sexcapades, but there are interesting and exigent issues raised – and ridiculous ones as well. It is that which maintains the writers’ self-respect, I assume, but it works, especially when it challenges the apparent amorality that most of the characters seem to live by.

And what casting – James Spader and William Shatner are enough, but Candice Bergen, too, and such notables in guest spots as Parker Posey prove that even Hollywood actors go gaga over the gilded lifestyle of these rich and famous attorneys. The acting could easily be considered a cheat because they all play on their personas, but that’s only a starting point; Spader and Shatner build onto their personas and make them seem not like personas at all, but real, incredibly neurotic people.

I admit, I’m a Shatner/Star Trek junkie, and his character, Denny Crane, is like Captain Kirk boiled down to his impulses. Both are egoists because of their astounding competence, but Kirk had virtue and restraint. Like Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – the best of the Shatner movies, one that is great even apart from the franchise – Crane’s ego is being crushed by his advancing years (Shatner is 76). Crane is what the Priceline spokesman thinks he is, or, rather, what he wants us to think he thinks he is. And, whether fictional or not, it makes for a great character. The writers know this, too, and make sure to satisfy one’s need to dig into Denny’s almost-enviable unfettered narcissism; they were even clever enough to make this corrupt lothario a staunch Republican. And, as his protégé, Spader’s deadpan is so good that it belongs in a cemetery. Unless he’s having a rare crisis of conscience or smiling like a serpent because he is so pleased by his own cruel humor, that icy deadness is so complete that his moral dilemmas from tough cases are that much more provocative. He isn’t really dead anyway, it’s just a comfort for him to pretend to be.

I don’t wish to exclude those without personas. Spader’s counterpoint is Mark Valley, whose character, Brad Chase, has the perfect lawyer name but not the patina of sleaze. Valley navigates the contradictions of the character quite well: he’s like the only all-star who’s afraid to take steroids.

I’ve only seen about a half dozen episodes from different seasons, but, from what I’ve watched, I’d rank this show alongside Curb Your Enthusiasm as one of my favorites in terms of current, fictional TV comedy. David E. Kelly’s cynical masterpiece lives by Denny Crane’s personal credo: “live for today.” And – though I’m sure this’ll be funny ten, twenty years down the line – that’s exactly how television comedy should work.

Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn – August 2, 2007

"Rescue Dawn" is a peculiarity. It's one of the only war films I've seen that has neither a pro- nor anti- agenda; it's just there. Herzog even skimps on the whole triumph-of-the-human-spirit shtick - and this is mostly a good thing - until he resorts to a bizarrely out-of-place freeze-frame ending. The unorthodox problem this movie suffers is that the main character is offbeat, but empty - a Teutonic pragmatist who operates solely on instinct and attitude. Dieter, a real-life P.O.W. that Herzog profiled in a documentary, is unflappable; when captured and bound by the Viet Cong he complains insistently that he has to go to the bathroom. His anomic weirdness is darkly comical, which keeps one’s attention in concert with the unevenly-paced, rather conventional capture-and-escape yarn. Bale puts his heart in the role, but can't put in his soul; the character either buries his or is simply lacking. The only metaphor or motif that I could discern was Dieter's love of aviation, but he seemed to have no other motivation to break free. Herzog even skimps on his soldier's camaraderie; Dieter shows few hints of being affected by the loss of his closest friend in the film, Steve Zahn (who is good as his quirky, almost homosexual follower), especially after he's back with his apparently dearer old pals from his aircraft carrier, who had hastily been dropped from the movie after Dieter's plane crash very early on. Frankly, I think the caustic proto-hippie played by Jeremy Davies (bearing a resemblance to Charles Manson) is a much more interesting character than our “hero”. Herzog doesn't editorialize or force meaning out of the material, but it alas lacks the ambiguity that provokes thought. "Rescue Dawn" is a niftily austere character study, but something fundamental is missing in action.

Stranger than Paradise

Stranger than Paradise – July 19, 2007

There's a mysterious allure that keeps one (semi) focused on "Stranger than Paradise," Jim Jarmusch's austere second film. The characters, a small-time swindler from Brooklyn, his dopey pal and his Hungarian emigree cousin who serves hot dogs in Cleveland, are unambitious people who live desperately blah lives. Their pettiness, aloofness and lack of any sort of motivation whatever is funny, but, as uncomplex as they are, a lot seems to be happening on a deeper level. Why does Willie seem to resent his being Hungarian? Why is Eva in America? Why do the guys pursue her and act protective of her as though they are the responsible big brothers to a thirteen-year-old? Is there any lust to their attraction to Eva? Are they content with their listlessness? As in "Broken Flowers," it's the unuttered thoughts and unanswered questions that make the small characters whole and one's imagination enriched. The conclusion, somewhat improbable, seems contrived - especially when compared to the stark realism of the rest of the movie. But any open-ended denouement would suffice; to depart the movie with any traditional sense of resolution would be a cheat.

First Batch

Crash (1996) – July 18, 2007

A pervy pleasure--that is, "Crash," a flick about people getting hot over traffic accidents, is enjoyable if watched ironically, which - I hope - it is at least half-way meant to be. Otherwise, it's an amorphous mess of escalating fetishes that the blase characters just seem to tack on, as though adding them to their resumes. The movie's greatest feat is by Elias Koteas as a long-time crash-erection veteran who manages to out-creep James Spader, who plays his apprentice. Also, for those of you who've seen "Empire of the Sun," it's funny to think that the kid in that movie-memoir (J. G. Ballard) grew up to write the book on which this is based. At the very least, this film is more fun than the 2004 "Crash."

Sicko – July 17, 2007

Michael Moore's newest documentary is not as much of an agit-prop rabblerouser as its predecessor, "Fahrenheit 911," was. "Sicko," though alarmist, was made with the skeptical Middle American moderate in mind; I suppose Moore took it for granted that liberals and - according to a recent survey - the youth already believed in universal health care. Maybe because I am a youth, I found some of it a bit mawkish--inoffensively so, but still yawn-producing. More importantly, though, I found some of the material dubious (France, where riots took place last year, seemed like a veritable utopia). And I can only take so much of Moore acting as a dumdum devil's advocate. But maybe genteel soft-headedness with a few moments of genuinely affecting drama is exactly what the polarizing "left-wing elite" director needs to entice red staters who'd otherwise be liable to assault the screen with handfuls of rotten tomatoes.

Reno 911: Miami – July 16, 2007

The police in "Reno 911: Miami" may only be a modern equivalent of the Keystone Kops, but the movie - like the TV series - is successful because they approach the scatological and inane with a clinical deadpan. It's not challenging humor, but it's clever and the troupe has talent; each character can see each other's quirky smugness and idiocy, but none can see their own, and the conflict that arises from the rival fatuity makes it entertainingly absurd. Yeah, there's stuff that's downright dumb - on occasion, too dumb - but it's mostly rectified by the characters' dynamic of self-righteous ineptitude. The actors have no humility, but no pretension either, which is what made the "reality" of "Borat" seem superficial. "The Da Ali G Show" didn't transfer to the big screen as well because Cohen's schtick became too unspontaneous and too purposeful; outside of getting laughs, there's no purpose for this, but who'd want one?

2046 – July 10, 2007

The title and the advertising were both misnomers; "2046" is not really a sci-fi film. I wish I'd seen "In the Mood for Love" - purportedly its prequel - first, but this works on its own as Tony Leung finds himself going in and out of romances, but always maintaining a cool distance that makes his women despondent. Unable to escape his past, he is lovelorn too, and he channels it through his lurid science fiction. Wong Kar Wai traps his characters in his cramped, but stunning compositions; he has a great aesthetic eye. The visuals, including those tongue-in-cheek ones that represent Leung's futurist tales - a train that goes from the present to 2046 (either the year or apartment number of his first girlfriend, you decide) and has never carried back any passengers, save himself - are a cross between "2001," "Blade Runner" and "Last Tango in Paris." "2046" runs a bit overlong, but it is sensual and touching and forlorn without being cold.

Stay – July 10, 2007

Marc Forster may very well be the greatest hack director of his generation. He works in the Starbucks upper-middle brow with films like "Finding Neverland" and "Stranger than Fiction" in his repertoire, and he does quite a good job bridging the gap between the multiplex and the art house. "Stay" is no exception; it plays like David Lynch lite. There's a core mystery involving a seemingly supernatural Ryan Gosling who plans to die Saturday at midnight, something that his interim psychiatrist (Ewan MacGregor) is going through a labyrinth to thwart. The solution isn't too much of a surprise, but there's a little extra depth added to the been-done ending that prevents it from being too much of a cop-out. It renders explanation for the fluky twists and turns of the middle section unnecessary, but I wasn't too bothered; Forster's machinations were brilliantly engineered.

8 ½ – July 6, 2007

It's easy to see how this movie is beloved by so many film students; it depicts the foibles of moviemaking in Homeric proportions - and this is something very attractive to the film student's natural sense of self-importance, a very powerful force that I can vouch for. But "8 1/2" is also a lot of fun, and although it gets a little sentimental at the end (Fellini's influence on Woody Allen's eighties work is evident), it is always technically superb, breezy, witty and silly. You can forgive Fellini for his narcissism, and even his showbiz caricatures - which modernized and made hip the Old Hollywood images of producers and stars, but unfortunately created a new breed of movie-people stereotypes that remains pervasive today (think "Entourage") - because it's generally lightweight and wacky. The autobiographical epic can only be taken half-seriously, and the sappy, baroque end makes up for any cruelty toward the archetypes. (I'm sure "La Dolce Vita" is the same way, but I've yet to see that film.)

M – July 2, 2007

Fritz Lang's early talkie is kind of slow at first, especially because there are no characters you can truly identify with (this becomes part of the theme later on), but the meat comes deeper into "M", when the city's underworld confronts Peter Lorre as the child murderer in its own version of a tribunal, which may or may not be as just as one of the state's. The movie is full of ambiguities, including the comparison between the police and the crooks, but especially in Lorre's excellent performance; except for a twitch at a cafe about half-way through, it's hard to perceive that this man who lures little girls with candy and balloons and then mutilates them is troubled by a conscience until the end. Unlike his decidedly creepy persona during his Hollywood period, he's pudgy here and baby-faced. Even despite his mammoth eyeballs, in another context he wouldn't seem like a pervert at all. "M" is aided by its time period; the low-fidelity or non-existent sound, along with the lurid Expressionist sets, adds an extra air of eeriness. It all serves Lang's latent socialist message, which manifests itself subtly and only on occasion seems preachy.

The Seventh Seal – June 28, 2007

Although this film is considered a hallmark of Scandinavian gloominess (a knight challenging Death to chess amid the Black Plague), people rarely mention just how high on goofballs "The Seventh Seal" is. Sure, there's thick allegory, intriguing exist...(read more)entialism and agnostic musings, but there is also a scene where an actor uses reverse psychology on a dummy while a wry squire narrates the foibles in the background, and I couldn't but think that Bergman had been inspired by "That's So Raven." Old Deathy Poo was actually a pretty funny fellow through most of the film - his parts were probably my favorites - but I felt that the movie's philosophizing on our mortal coil seemed undercut when the Grim Reaper acted like Bugs Bunny.

Evan Almighty – June 28, 2007

At one point, Steve Carell, playing a freshman congressman who has been physically transformed into the Biblical Noah by divine intervention, gets asked by a superior who it is that's telling him to make that crazy ark. Evan is embarrassed to say "God," and when he does, he's derided by the entire House of Representatives. To make a scene like that in a movie today, the makers of "Evan Almighty" must be crass, condescending or ignorant - or, possibly, some fun combination thereof. Of course, when the flood does come, everyone realizes that the one wackjob in Congress who claims to be a theist was right all along. And, as a corrupt Southern statesman, does John Goodman's character really have to be named after Huey Long? Does that even count as an allusion? The movie is moderately funny thanks to Carell, and a wee bit scary thanks to an imperious Morgan Freeman - certainly frightening enough to give Christopher Hitchens, the "anti-theist," nightmares. I'm not criticizing this film's belief in God, only its carelessness. I don't think they know what they're selling, though implicitly: the falsehood that religiosity is frowned upon and victimized by today's government and that non-believers had better learn the errors of their ways. Faithfulness aside, that's a dubious philosophy to be peddling, even in "harmless" claptrap like this.

Knocked Up – June 28, 2007

Frankly, I went to see "Knocked Up" not because the setup looked funny, but because it looked conventional - completely, utterly conventional. And, yet, it had the blessings of critics and audiences, and I had to support something that could knock one of this summer's numerous sequel grotesqueries out of its number one spot. But "Knocked Up" was a genuinely good comedy; it lacks Steve Carell and Catherine Keener, who held together director Apatow's "40 Year Old Virgin," but it cuts back on the worst of that movie, too. This flick is more mature; it even looks sunnier and less plastic. I hesitate to say it's altogether funnier, but it is "better," and it's unique nowadays as a mainstream comedy with a personal angle and realistic approach. According to interviews with the cast and crew, the actors are basically playing themselves, and although that technique has its limits, it works in this situation and with these people; they are relatively ordinary, but quite likeable. Our primary surrogate is Ben, a seemingly boorish pothead who is really more like a nonintellectual Woody Allen who can't help but blather when real life surprisingly interrupts his dreamy wanderlust. He matures somewhat, but - fortunately - there's no real lesson for him to learn, so we don't see him conform to some "better" standard. He's a chummy dude throughout and willing to help rear his brewing mistake from the get-go. Although the hastiness with which Alison decides to not abort the baby is suspect - that option seems to be played off as selfish and materialistic - it's unfair for one not to dismiss that detail because, if drawn out, it would put a stopper on the plot. Nobody wants to be bogged down with REAL reality too much, anyway. But, other than that, I salute the movie for its lack of conformity; those regular movie preconceptions about the need for marriage and the stay-at-home-mom would be the kind of formula that's anathema to these filmmakers' style and, in fact, is expertly mocked by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (who was a highlight as the drunk driver in "Virgin"). "Knocked Up" is lithely written and surprisingly dynamically played.

Ladyhawke – June 19, 2007

Who knew the fourteenth century could be scored by synthesizer? And, I'd love to see the behind-the-scenes footage where Matthew Broderick vomits between takes after delivering every line. If you like idiotic fantasy-romance-bestiality, or just laughing at a ripe example of eighties blockbuster bullshit, this is your movie. I'll give it half a star, though, because the filmmakers didn't seem to grasp how insipid their product was. At least it's innocent enough to unite the entire family for a night of relentless ridiculing.

The 40 Year Old Virgin – June 19, 2007

Somewhat overrated and quite overlong, but - and it may almost be trite to say so - Carell transcends the gimmick by playing a likable, "realistic" guy that we can all project our frustrations onto; he's the straight man, but an offbeat one that's losing his nerve with self-consciously going through adolescence yet again. The movie has the decency not to rush Andy or prod him for his nonconformity, but it meanders with its hit-or-miss dirty talk and now-stereotypical vulgar Middle Easterners. Outside of Carell and Keener, the movie didn't feel very loose and the coy musical number at the end made me want to fast forward. But, don't get me wrong - condoms, a horny, butch boss, throw-away repartee about an ex-girlfriend, a tranny hooker, kids walking in on parents having "sex" - it definitely had its moments.

V for Vendetta – June 13, 2007

Even if the executives in charge of this production only made this movie out of a fiscal sense of liberal chic, the filmmakers themselves seem to have believed in what they were espousing with unabashed fervor. The Wachowskis, who adapted the screenplay from an unhappy graphic novelist, even have the guts to condone forms of "terrorism" if it's in the fair, egalitarian name of social justice. "V" is so naïve as to brush aside a long history of parody - they pull stunts like showing the evil "1984" chancellor as a talking head on a giant video screen - but it works as a humble admission that the filmmakers know that this is an exercise in kitsch. This is, by no means, a work of genius; it's almost a stretch to call it "smart." The tie-ins with today's political realities are heavy-handed and the plot is full of holes and stretches. But the Wachowskis and the director (James McTiegue), who is overlooked because of them, know how to entertain on a commercial level. That skill, and their romantic - if somewhat immature - idealism, keeps the movie afloat. In that way, "V for Vendetta" is like "Potemkin" for kids; there are explosions and fight scenes, alright, but some bona fide feeling behind them.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005) – June 12, 2007

It's pretty incredible to see current actors waltz around the expressionist sets digitally lifted from the classic German silent "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," but other than the technology, this remake brings virtually nothing new to the table. It doesn't even use the many advancements made in the film medium since 1919 to make the offbeat old creeper more frightening to modern audiences the way that Werner Herzog did in his version of "Nosferatu." The actors trudge through the pedestrian, semi-anachronistic dialogue as though they are in an actual silent film - although, in fairness, it mustn't be easy to act in a green-screen void. Anyone who's seen the new "Star Wars" trilogy knows that. Nevertheless, if you're a fan of the original, or German Expressionist cinema in general, this little experiment is a worthwhile rent.

Pan’s Labyrinth – June 10, 2007

Though I defend the Academy's decision to award "The Lives of Others" best foreign language film over this, I don't by any means think that "Pan's Labyrinth" is an unremarkable movie. It's easier to appreciate than the German film because it can fall back on its visual imagination, but the fabulous look is more than mere gloss. This adult story about a child clutching onto a fairy tale amid surprisingly grotesque atrocities is deeper and more interesting than any of the "Lord of the Rings" films. In fact, the stupidity of the little girl protagonist in a few of the fantasy scenes was almost detrimental to the movie; the stark evil-ness of Sergi Lopez's fascist Captain Vidal was just as engrossing as the splendiferous mysticism. Allie should see it.

Buffalo 66 – June 7, 2007

Considering Vincent Gallo’s overwhelming pretension, this movie is embarrassingly shallow. When you boil down all of his intrusive over-stylization and superficial quirkiness, all you have left is a banal, unbelievable love story that could have easily been the subject of a Rob Reiner film. Because Gallo has “indie filmmaker” tattooed to his forehead it’s harder to appreciate the small moments of goofy pleasance that the film has to offer, but some – such as the main character’s father’s “musical number” – show through. Christina Ricci is the best part of this vapid, self-indulgent picture, even if it’s impossible to buy into her character’s motivations.

Hot Fuzz – May 30, 2007

"Hot Fuzz" was boisterously fun and consistently entertaining. The humor is never stupid, even when they parody the dumbest of Hollywood's action behemoths. Its filmmakers never fall into that usual trap where they end up making that which they are l...(read more)ampooning; but unlike some other unimaginative and blasé satires these days, they don't need to. "Hot Fuzz" is wittier and more engaging than its predecessors, without losing that happy spark of idiotic excess from the blockbusters that inspired its creators in the first place. My friends and I came out of the theater at midnight bristling with energy.

Lacombe Lucien – May 29, 2007

Like Horn, the French Jew who is only surviving World War II by serving the corrupt French arm of the gestapo, you can't quite bring yourself to hate Lucien Lacombe. When he helps the Nazis, he's not immoral-he's amoral. Lucien just doesn't get it wh...(read more)en he murders his countrymen at the behest of the invaders; he doesn't quite know how to react when he falls in love with Horn's daughter, either. Louis Malle, the director, tried admirably hard to make this an objective film - which it's not - and, because of the open-mindedness of that technique, the audience doesn't know what to feel, either. The movie may seem troubling and overly ponderous to some, but I never felt disengaged or apathetic once.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley – May 28, 2007

You get what you'd expect in a picture about revolutionaries and nationalism in a country like Ireland. The first part - with a few notable exceptions - is rather dull and slightly aggravating; one of the English commanders is ogre-like in his sadism...(read more). It picks up emotionally in the second act, though, when it takes on the murky issue of partition, and Cillian Murphy's relationship with his brother becomes the stuff of tragedy.