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.