Notes from Underground

A Room with a View

2011-10-03T14:15:00.009-04:00

Merchant-Ivory's A Room with a View (1986) is probably as "tasteful" as movies get. When its Renaissance illustrations and Florentine backdrop and Puccini on the soundtrack first broke through the Hollywood machine, louder and more starved for art than ever, it must have seemed like a godsend. Yet it can easily be shunted aside as drawing-room porn, a Masterpiece Theater afterbirth awash with "culture," but, in sum, only as challenging as Beverly Hills Cop or Top Gun. But I still found it marvelously entertaining, and here, I think, is why -- apart from such obvious factors as a wonderful cast, with wonderful elocution, in beautifully refined settings. The E. M. Forrester novel on which it was based was written in 1908, when Victorian mores were still in tact and the dark clouds of World Wars were still beyond the horizon. What was once probably considered a satire can now be seen as a straight document about exceptionally straight times; and since the strictures that keep Lucy Honeychurch from admitting her love to George Emerson are so unbelievably anachronistic, her problems seem clear-cut and simple to the point of not being problems at all. This world is both weightless and wealthy: Lucy's distress can be served up at tea or during a game of tennis on a regal estate or on an impromptu trip to Italy. And it really can be her only concern, since nobody has to work -- so it seems as if she has no concerns at all. In short, Edwardian England seems like a sort of idyll, unsullied even by seriously sexual thoughts -- all that Lucy and George do is a three-second kiss. The rest is all talk, and not even the capital-R Romance talk of Dench's novelist, because Lucy's too cool-headed. This is life on constant holiday, when it looked like happy days were there to stay.

The Town

2011-09-15T01:13:00.007-04:00

Ben Affleck's The Town is a movie I wanted to like more than I did. I did like it; there's no question that as a director, and as an actor, Affleck is earnest; and it's hard to not feel a certain affection for his character. But the dramatic arc goes haywire. He hardly flinches when he tries to pick up the woman he held hostage during a robbery (Rebecca Hall), and she hardly flinches when the FBI guy (Jon Hamm) tells her the truth about Affleck. He doesn't even give himself a moment to register the truth when a gangster reveals that his mother, presumed missing, was murdered. The director puts the brake on scenes too early, and plot threads simply don't tie together. The romance looms large early on, and one wants to see Hall and Affleck stay together; but Jeremy Renner, as Affleck's psychopathic accomplice, isn't a threat to their love for long. Renner is a fantastic actor when he gets to be intense and this movie gives him plenty of excuses for that. But what is one to make of this townie pscyho with a heart of gold? He has a great moment when he slurps the remainder of his drink before being facing his final hail of gunfire from the FBI, but I was hoping for a little more Tommy Udo in him. He has too much "depth" when he should be simplistically frightening; and yet every other character is cardboard. Hall is stuck with the "love interest from out of town" label, and though Hamm's mannerisms are familiar, he tries to carve a prick out of his potentially dirty G-man. But Affleck is the only one with any substance, any hidden motivations. And the obstacles that require him to take on one last heist stack up too easily. Gone Baby Gone felt like the dime-novel mystery that it was, but Affleck seems to have made less with the more human material that The Town comprises. He doesn't come on as strongly with his hometown affection here, though one feels good at witnessing this love letter to a semi-anachronistic side of a city which is generally perceived in terms of wealth and history and Harvard and MIT. But the robbery scenes never go beyond average, and with the narrative ride as bumpy as it is, all one's left with is the Boston cream filling.

The Outlaw Josey Wales

2011-09-01T13:36:00.012-04:00

Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) is a compromise between the classical Western and the anti-Western, between the early Eastwood figure and his later directorial self. His early figure, despite the consistent veil of nonchalance, was actually split in two: The Man With No Name was the total mercenary, in the game only for money or survival (basically the same thing), and Dirty Harry was righteousness personified. Josey Wales hews more closely to the first. Even as the rest of his Confederate company defects at the end of the Civil War, he decides to go it on his own--not out of loyalty, and not for the cause, but mainly because he wants to be left alone. That is, he doesn't want to be the subject of any government; he identifies with dispossessed Indians and optimistic homesteaders, people who flee the constraints and trappings of civilization. In the old Westerns (like those of Ford and Hakws), Wales would've found his new home thanks to the Union Army's help; in the newer ones (like the Spaghetti Westerns or Little Big Man), he would've been implicated in making the Indians dispossessed. Here, he gets a little of both: "governments" are the killers (not just in wars, or in the way the Union guns down the surrendering Confederates, a rather garish touch. It's federal ninnies who put the bounty on Josey's head). Our hero first became bloodthirsty fighting for one government, and now he's only bloodthirsty because he's trying to get away from the other. The film has the facade of the traditional Western, but an underlying note of post-sixties anti-war/anti-authoritarian cynicism. Josey Wales is thus about "the right to be left alone": the subset of the American dream that, today, has devolved into an American delusion, but one that's forgivable when applied to the period in which this was set, when the countless factors that bind the world's population today either didn't exist or were worn thin by the vastness of the West. Even Orwell admitted that the Old West was one of the few historical frames in which men were truly free. Or was it just the inaccuracies of the Western genre that made him, and billions of others, think so? The implications of that "right" (privilege, really, but Americans love their entitlements) are often maliciously misapplied, though not in this film; Josey exercises it fairly, trading being left alone for settling down and leaving others alone. Even so, that doesn't mean that Josey Wales is not simplistic when compared to Unforgiven, which balanced its gunslinger's right to do as he pleased with that of his victims' right to survive. Josey identifies with dispossessed Indians, but black people don't seem to exist here, probably because that would mean a confrontation with historical facts, a confrontation with what Josey's army really was fighting for--and it wasn't universal liberty. The film is a sentimental fantasy, set at a time when such fantasies were permissible, and featuring a dry hero who counteracts the preachiness of a lot of Eastwood's later work. It isn't profound, but it's a beautiful Western--you wallow not just in the beauty of the setting or the beauty of the dream but in the freedom from feeling that either are affected.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

2011-07-31T23:10:00.010-04:00

Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) is on the far side of the spectrum from snark and irony, but maybe it could use a little more of it. It's about searching for innocence -- but that can be read, by some, as lusting for regression. The worst example of this tendency occurs when the little boy gives the butch art dealer a peck on the cheek on a park bench; the kid is a like a little roving fairy that cures middle-aged malaise just by virtue of his prelapsarian youthfulness. And the art dealer is your typical cold, repressive, self-serious type -- despite the fact that she utters the best line in the movie, a full-on parody of art-world obtuseness, "If it weren't for AIDS there'd be no email!" It's out-of-nowhere lines like that that keep the movie afloat. Miranda July, as an actress, has the odd misfortune of looking too much like what she is, and she emotes insecure, sugarplum sorrow with alarming ease and frequency. Like her love interest and his older son, her eyeballs are big enough to make Bambi's look like marbles; the shoe salesman has a distractingly creepy, volatile look -- like a medieval hick (he was in "Winter's Bone") -- and yet he's got an odd twitch about the nose, like a bunny rabbit or Sam on "Bewitched." The love affair between these two, on which the movie is unevenly balanced, seems sudden and without foundation. Yet, at times, July pushes you away and then somehow wins you over: She trails the salesman as he leaves work, and wears her self-consciousness on her sleeve. You think he's going to bop her. But they tug a metaphor like taffy, and you think, This chick's got game. (At least with creeps.)

In an odd contrast with the recklessly emotive adults, the two biracial boys, and a young girl that the older boy gets acquainted with, seem almost like Children of the Damned. But the infamous "poop back-and-forth" bit is very funny (despite culminating, oh-so-cleverly, in that smooch -- which, upon reflection, is a pretty damning culmination: She can only be sexually honest with a small child tout court -- isn't it odd how much baggage comes with this quirk?), and there's something like Lynch Lite in the blowjob scene. Their weird affair with the shoe seller's coworker is, I suppose, an antithesis of the general message; he likes to think dirty thoughts about the wanna-be sluts (still really virgins, of course) but can't consummate them. But, really, I could do without those lewd messages he posts on his window: You'd think the Neighborhood Watch would have him under citizen's arrest. But Peter's relationship with the little girl -- even the 15-year-old has more innocent times to reflect on -- functions well as a parodic metaphor for the adults' questing for innocence. There are a lot of too-heavy touches of lighthearted sadness, and one wonders how well this will all age -- particularly the too-cool-for-school soundtrack, which sounds like a record needle skipping or indie marching orders -- but July's wide eyes apply to her directorial vision, too, and that informs the unreconstructed innocence of her comic gaze. It's a refined wisp of a movie with a few very memorable moments.

Mildred Pierce

2011-03-28T22:58:00.009-04:00

Mildred Pierce (1945) starts with a callous cop accosting Mildred as she's about to leap off a bridge: an incident that sets the tone for the whole movie. Coming out the year World War II ended, this not-quite noir is an apotheosis of the Old Hollywood factory ethic, the sort of glamorous movie-star filmmaking that you're simply meant to assent to, no questions asked. But to a modern viewer, the conventions are so bald-faced that any pretense to "realism" falls by the wayside. I've seen a lot of movies from this period, but, somehow, this was one of the worst at drawing me in. Perhaps it's the pacing: There are leaps in time between scenes (probably a way of thinning out the James M. Cain source material) so characters have dramatic fallings out that must be resolved in the interstices, as they always end up back together -- always a mistake. Or maybe it's the implicit attitudes toward women (Joan Crawford can only palely imitate one, though, to be fair, she's pluming the shallow depths of movie-queen opaqueness), because Mildred seems like way too much of a chump if she's supposed to be a wildly successful restaurateur. This must be hard to do, given her company: a brassy assistant who always has some sassy, disdainful remark ready for whatever man enters the room (Eve Arden); her maid (Butterfly McQueen), who'd be a painful, walking stereotype if it wasn't for her Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks voice; her sleazo business manager (Jack Carson), whose idea of romance is demanding that she makes him a drink the minute she splits with her husband (an immediate and painless separation, mind you, that's decided upon within five minutes); her sleazo playboy boyfriend (Zachary Scott), who's a pencil-neck despite his pencil-thin mustache; and, of course, her daughter: the flashily named Veda (Ann Blyth), winner of the coldest-bitch-ever-to-appear-in-a-movie award. It's one thing for the blue-blood Scott to look down on Mildred for working for a living; it's quite another for her social-climber daughter to. (The Pierces aren't rich at the beginning, but they sure don't look poor . . . ) Their condescension is morally repugnant (and completely un-American) -- something that the filmmakers don't let you forget. But the obviousness of the delivery obscures the message. This is no mean theme for forties Hollywood, so often accused of trafficking in escapism, but the style is stultifying. (This must not have been the case for audiences of the time.) It's an unbelievable string of tawdry implausibilities, but it's all of a piece -- Crawford's imperious helplessness included -- and one admires all of its touches, down to every last shade of perfectly glimmering gray. But the movie may be worth watching simply for the gratification of seeing Mildred tear Veda's extorted $10,000 check; it's Joan's best scene because even she wants to give that snob a smack.

Le Samouraï

2010-09-17T15:36:00.010-04:00

In Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), Alain Delon is like Michael Corleone at the end of the first Godfather. He’s dead-eyed and withdrawn; he lives to accomplish objectives that he spares nary a thought about; his girlfriend is an accessory, nothing more. Or is she? Although this is often called a great film, and Melville’s best—Army of Shadows, which features one of the most heart-rending executions in movie history, is a bona fide masterpiece—I don’t think it’s quite in the pantheon, or was meant to be. We see how Michael’s heart went cold; Le Samouraï is not—to borrow from Louis Malle’s The Fire Within—about a man with a heart to lose, but a brute force of nature. The title led me to expect an honorable killer, like Vito Corleone. The preface is from the book of Bushido: “There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai, unless it is that of the tiger of the jungle, perhaps.” The title should have been Le Tigre. But there’s more than one keyword in there, and they’re related. Delon lives in a scummy, unadorned flat. He’s not a disillusioned drinker like his film noir antecedents: He orders a whiskey and leaves it at the bar, and his apartment is stocked with Perriers. Only Perriers. “Solitude” implies an introspection that Delon lacks, but then there’s that tricky “perhaps.” That ties into his relationship with his girl (Nathalie Delon), who seems to think he needs her. And it ties into his relationship with the pianist (Caty Rosier); we’re never sure of her motives. Even if the story seems extremely basic, and Delon seems like a rather paltry assassin—from what we see of his methods, he should’ve been behind bars a long time ago—Melville doesn’t give us quite enough to know what’s going on, and that adds to the tension. Rosier gives him a look, a slight variant of her polite, professional-musician smile; is she an accomplice? Their relationship is ambiguous in a way that Delon’s personality is not. He’s impenetrable because he’s a genre construct, an existential given—and nobody underplays as stylishly as Delon. The mystery of his origins seems artificial, and that’s why the film never transcends its genre, as Army of Shadows and The Godfather do. But, as a thriller—as a commercial film rather than a work of art—it’s top notch, on par with something like the American Kiss of Death. It’s a French French Connection, with all the scrappy vigor of the New Wave. Delon may not be a samurai, but Melville cuts like one; like the swordsman in The Seven Samurai, it’s hard not admire his graceful craft.

Two-Lane Blacktop

2010-09-10T18:35:00.010-04:00

Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) has a cool, distinctive vision of America that’s both post-hippie and pre-counterculture; the young anti-heroes, though two are played by musicians, seem rather apathetic to drugs and rock’n’roll. James Taylor and Laurie Bird share sexual vibes, but this love ain’t free—though, for the hitchhiking teenager Bird, love often appears to be. For the mechanic, played by Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, life only seems to exist beneath a car’s hood. Then there’s Warren Oates, the rambler in his G.T.O., who seems snowed in by his life experiences (he has lived twice as long as the others); he has the most human dimensions, but seems like a mythological shape-shifter: He’s so uncomfortable with himself that he puts on a smile and tells a new lie to every hitcher he picks up. Being an itinerant isn’t really a choice for him. When he picks up Harry Dean Stanton—whose voice warbles like Hank Williams’s, in piteous tones—and Stanton caresses G.T.O.’s leg, Oates shouts (hilariously!), “I’m not into that!” When Oates picks up a mustachioed hippie, who implies that a mysterious “we” have only thirty, forty years left (it being 2010 puts “us” in trouble), this pessimism makes Oates crumble; it rattles his phony enthusiasm and hits him too close to home. Nobody in this picture has a past or future; and since they keep on trucking, nobody really has a present, either. The “road” is a cheesy metaphor—even Hellman, in a D.V.D. feature, hates to “acknowledge the existential stigma this movie has to it”—but it’s a beaut here. Route 66—now an icon for nostalgists—is the road they’re taking cross-country, and if that’s not a bad omen, what is?

While seconding Hellman’s reluctance to broach existentialism—though, in a way, it’s there, just as it’s present in so much else—I think this film compares to Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Alain Resnais’s beautiful avant-garde poem of about a dozen years earlier. The stories are completely different, and so are the narrative techniques, but they both hit on that lack of a present timeframe. In the French film, time is garbled by flashbacks to emotions that still feel fresh; here, we haven’t anything to flash back to. It’s about the perils of living in the moment. Blacktop came out the same year that Hunter Thompson wrote about the wave of youth and freedom cresting in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The counterculture’s awareness of its own demise is palpable, almost bitter, here—in a way that it wasn’t in the euphoric Bonnie and Clyde, four years earlier. (Some critics compared this film to the recent George Clooney vehicle The American, but despite the drag-racing, Blacktop exists on its own—without pulp. The American wraps its “art” not around something that’s dying, but something that’s always been, aesthetically speaking, dead.) But, to look back on Blacktop from this vantage—writing on a laptop, publishing on the internet, driving on long, anonymous freeways from which every town looks the same—there’s enough long hair to make one feel nostalgic. We’re witnessing a moment the filmmakers already thought was gone.

Caché

2010-09-06T15:45:00.008-04:00

Michael Haneke’s Caché is about white guilt, French division. You can tell early on that the mystery of the videotapes—à la Lost Highway—will never be solved, and that there’ll be no chance for Daniel Auteuil’s Georges to redeem himself. The tapes are just a ploy to strip him naked, to show that beneath the veneer of civilization—he hosts a show about books on public television, and his wife works in publishing—he’s a petty, pathetic man, still held accountable for a crime he committed at age six, a crime that he’ll never have the humility to fess up to. Haneke’s “objective” style has the same objectives as the videotapes. In The White Ribbon, set nearly a century ago, his dreamlike, black-and-white formalism captured how things might have felt; in Caché, he seems to be saying that this is how things are. Everybody—even refined literary types (the sort who’d go to see such a high-minded thriller)—is stained. It might have been more tolerable if Georges went through some semblance of a change, but Haneke makes it clear that, outside of his nightmares, Georges will never budge. To him, the mystery has been solved, even as it’s made abundantly clear to us that he’s latching onto a red herring—an improbable one at that. But the film is certainly gripping; you suffer on Georges’s behalf.

Tokyo Story

2010-09-03T18:21:00.010-04:00

Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story is stately; it was made in 1953, but feels much older. I think this has less to do with the cultural divide than it does the gulf between the ages. Though the movie is considered one of the greatest works of world cinema, and carries you along with a strange, becalming, old-world serenity, it seems to raise issues that it refuses to confront. This can partly be explained as reflective of the way the family it depicts interacts, but that isn’t quite satisfactory; the film is about moving on, but it moves on too easily, with so much left up in the air. It’s too tidy to be ambiguity; it must be underdevelopment. All the conflicts seem benign, as if elucidation was not required. The elderly father is disappointed in his son, a neighborhood doctor. Why? He should be doing better things than helping the sick? Their relationship goes completely undefined. Unlike a recent family-reunion movie, A Christmas Tale, the filial dynamics here haven’t the weight of history; except in the case of one daughter—a bitchy beautician who looks like Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People—it’s hard to imagine what life was like when the kids were growing up and living under the same roof in provincial Onomichi. We can’t really determine why the old couple’s daughter-in-law, whose husband has died (in World War II?), is so selflessly kind to them. Is it because she’s still carrying their son’s torch? Is it some guilt that’s been carried over? Perhaps it’s her kinship with the old man: They both have strange, impersonal smiles—like flight attendants’. Some sort of emotions are being repressed, but which? The revelation that Father was a souse, and may become one again soon, makes his placidity seem a touch sinister. Father calls Mother headstrong, but she isn’t really. They only fight once, in the very beginning—and, in retrospect, that seems a false start. But Chieko Higashiyama, who plays Mother, is a true focal point. She’s the movie’s soul. Unlike everyone else, she seems acutely aware of the undercurrents that the others are sitting cross-legged on top of. She looks as though she’s spent her life waiting for these feelings to be uncovered, but she ends up dying in vain; her passing is made to symbolize the end of an era.

That era, of course, is prewar Japan. The elderly couple are like fish out of water in their nation’s capital. It’s a metropolis to them, though—to modern viewers, aware of how cosmopolitan Tokyo has since become—it seems like a second-class city in the Rust Belt. Ozu’s style is partly to blame. He focuses on straight lines and right angles; all of his static camerawork is intricately worked out—in a way, masterful. But, except for a few shots of traditional architecture at the end, the cramped Tokyo interiors don’t look much different from the Onomichi homestead. And even when things are “lively,” his pace remains the same; it’s vibrance as seen from an objective point of view, one which never differs, and is at cross-purposes with the movie’s insistence that things change. Universal as the theme is, I don’t respond so well to the caveat that things invariably change for the worse. There’s a touch of quietism in how Ozu appears to see things: Children grow apart from their parents, but children also become worse people, necessarily selfish, and the process is inevitable. Even the daughter-in-law admits that she’ll be subject to it—despite herself. Mother is an externalization of Ozu’s style; that’s why she’s the one to die.

Still, Tokyo Story must be judged as a product of its time. It seems to be a Japanese equivalent of Dickensian England—at the end of an era in which members of a family live out their lives in an ancestral home, and yet before the advent of true mass communication. One gets the impression that the old couple hardly sees their children, and do not talk to them frequently. For emergencies, they still send telegrams; the house in Onomichi probably doesn’t have a telephone. No wonder their visit to the city seems so momentous. If nothing else, the bucolic gotham of this film lends perspective to Kurosawa’s High and Low of ten years later. Though I thought that movie was a bit too procedural, and that it wore its themes on its sleeves, the gap between it and Tokyo Story says a lot about Japanese growth and urbanity in the middle of the twentieth century. No wonder that the nightlife scrutinized by the Kurosawa film looked like a wild Westernization. And it isn’t very hard to grasp Tokyo Story’s enduring appeal. It makes the increasing complexity of the world feel simpler. It looks at the future with eyes from the past, and its staunch, ascetic serenity reminds one that some values will never change.

Suspiria

2010-06-20T14:36:00.016-04:00

Dario Argento’s cult horror film Suspiria (1977) is impressive only, perhaps, for its blunt use of colors; there is no pretense to realism in their use, which is fine, because they’re stunning if only because they go against the grain of our expectations. The camerawork is eccentric, but only in an I’m-doing-an-homage-to-Hitchcock sort of way; the horror scenes—viewed today—are staged adequately, but not masterfully, and the little camera tricks are just that. A bigger problem is the noise-rock music, by the Goblins. It’s novel, I guess, but it isn’t suspenseful—rather, it’s loud and imposing, in competition with the plot rather than enhancing it. The film’s reputation is in its touches, and maybe they were more unique at the time; but the only really clever moments were when one victim fell onto a bed of barbed wire, and, particularly, when another girl’s head is pushed through a window. Nothing quite equals that latter incident for sheer lurid flamboyance; it’s a classic of a sort, but aside from a knife-wielding revenant, it’s really the only one.

And this doesn’t even cover the plot, which is about a coven of witches in charge of a school for ballerinas. I didn’t expect good acting, but Jessica Harper looks like a deer in the headlights throughout, and she has no luster as a character. Her instructor (Alida Valli—not the Alida Valli, from The Third Man, right? Really?) compliments her for being strong-headed when she requests to stay with a friend rather than live in a dorm; not only is Suzy not particularly strong-headed in this scene, but it never pays off. She doesn’t become that teacher’s pet, which might have given her an in with the witches. Argento was clearly taking off from Rosemary’s Baby, but, in this stylized ballet school—isolated not only geographically (which seems implausible) but from the modern world—there’s no sense of the horror in the mundane, which made Polanski’s movie so effective. There is no sense of betrayal because Valli and the headmistress (Joan Bennett) seem fishy from square one. Rosemary’s neighbors were, too, but at least they were likable for being so outsize yet familiar. Bennett, in particular, is bland and monotone to the point of being comic; but we never for a moment trust her, and I doubt we’re meant to laugh at her. There are no turnarounds. A boy who seems to have some inkling about the coven, and has a crush on Harper’s Suzy early on, lies about her roommate’s disappearance and then falls offscreen; he neither saves nor betrays her. Similarly, the phantom of the opera employed as the ballerinas’ butler is called ugly and stupid by the punctilious, mean-spirited Valli when he’s first introduced. She isn’t wrong. He never breaks free and seeks revenge against his masters. When Suzy goes to eliminate them, she’s on her own. Suzy’s first roommate, who seemed bitchy at first and then grew on her, also disappears without a trace; her development was a dead end. Even the ballet motif is utterly disregarded; they make no connection between that craft and witchcraft.

One fears that the makers of Suspiria (the title is a good one, but just as irrelevant) only wanted an excuse to huddle a bunch of young girls together; they may as well have been forthright and set the film in an academy for pole dancers. Watching the movie is a fun way to pass the wee hours of the night on the wee channels of the cable spectrum; it’s quick and innocuous. I’m sure that the film seemed more brutal when it came out, but that’s not much of a compliment. Seeing it today, it looks like routine old schlock—save for its pretty colors.

The Wind and the Lion

2010-02-13T16:01:00.008-05:00

The Wind and the Lion (1975) is a magnificent spectacle—a specifically American prequel to Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a celebration of robustness, with Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) posited as the counterpart of a sagacious, honorable Arab (Sean Connery), who defies the European-bought sultan of Morocco and kidnaps a tough-cookie American widow (Candace Bergen). Bergen seems phony during an execution scene, but, otherwise, the performances are spot-on. John Huston, as an aide to Roosevelt, seems as if he were wrested straight from the period.

All that I really wish to take exception to here is the film’s American exceptionalism: Were our motives really that much nobler than the French and Germans, established powers whose only concern, apparently, was money? I love me some T.R., who certainly was a complex and honorable man, but I can’t accept that, just because we were (and are) a comparatively young country, our intentions and aspirations to power were somehow purer. The President invokes God at the end—an intended parallel, certainly, to Connery’s character’s belief that he’s merely a vessel of the will of Allah—but there’s a level of stickiness that John Milius, a political conservative, probably didn’t want to mop clean. And yet, there’s an undeniable allure in robust politicians—something that seems so emetic post-Bush, and yet something that movie gets at in an honest, powerful way. It’s difficult to watch movies set during the so-called Springtime for Europe (and big-stick America) because it inspires such contradictory drives: those of the beauty in strength and adulation of courage, the assuredness of divine right, and the disgusting repercussions of unchecked power, of the inhumanity that naturally sprouts out of arrogance. As Adam Gopnik pointed out, viz Paul Gauguin, courage is the most ambiguous of virtues. The Wind and the Lion, despite the concomitant ambiguity, makes you feel the power of power in your very core.

A Woman Under the Influence

2009-09-11T00:03:00.020-04:00

A Woman Under the Influence—of what? Gena Rowlands mentions morphine once, but isn’t it in jest? I assume she’s meant to be under the influence of normal, lower-middle-class life, circa 1974, but she’s really just inflicted with diva disease. John Cassavetes’s filmmaking style was direction-without-direction, by which I think he meant to attain a deeper truth than that depicted in more conventional movies. But this film, regarded as a classic, is one of the most uncomfortable movies I’ve ever sat through. Rowlands doesn’t seem like she’s crazy, she seems like she’s acting crazy—she’s so bye-bye-birdy you want to laugh, but the serious undercurrents make you feel too queasy to do so. Mental illness doesn’t always have an apparent cause, but her campy overacting does—Cassavetes’s lax technique releases the drama queen within her like a lion into a shopping mall, and she chews the scenery like raw hunks of meat. She glowers and scrunches her face like Amy Sedaris in Strangers with Candy. As her husband, Peter Falk isn’t much better. When he blows his short fuse he’s a wild stereotype of loudmouth-goombah fury. He seems no saner than she does, and I can’t tell if that’s the point. When he tries to calm her down and have her be herself, he’s as effective as that succession of slappers who coax the frightened woman in Airplane!

There are some scenes that do feel right—quieter, looser scenes like Rowlands’s homecoming (at least in its first few minutes), and the film’s last few minutes, which aren’t all so quiet, but yet stand out as beautifully composed realism, even in terms of Rowlands and Falk’s acting. It’s as if they’ve used up their juice and were so exhausted from acting crazy that they called it quits; the movie’s over and they can be real people again, and we can sense their feeling of release. (The only real false note is in the chiruppy cooing of their forgiving children.) There’s at least one sustainedly good performance: Cassavetes’s Greek mother Katherine is wonderful as Falk’s Italian mother Margaret (although how many first- or second-generation Italian women are named Margaret?). She speaks like a variation of Ruth Gordon’s batty oldster in Rosemary’s Baby, but you can sense the stability in her nippiness that Rowlands’s nuttiness lacks.

The movie earns brownie points from me for its intentions, for which it’s probably also earned its reputation as a verité masterpiece. But good intentions and healthy experimentation can sometimes result in bad ideas and blah moviemaking. I doubt the actors were intending to play the farce that they do. But, when making movies with such serious intentions, actors’ instincts can veer toward the grandiose; and if the director thinks he’s just an observer capturing real life unfold, and doesn’t tell the cast to tone down when it should, then he’s letting stage-trained thespians turn his ultra-realism into a theater of the absurd.

The Innocents

2008-06-23T00:08:00.003-04:00

"The Innocents" (1961) probably holds up better than most old horror movies. The frightening elements are psychosexual, but in a subtle, layered way--and it's subtle not just because the movie is old. If the undertones were any stronger--even if the film were made today--it would've become instant camp. (This isn't to say that a campy version wouldn't be entertaining.)

"The Innocents" is based on Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" (1898), which I started reading awhile back, but I was so bored with the prologue that I gave up--a mistake, perhaps, that I should rectify. (The change in name does more than make the title sleeker.) Deborah Kerr plays the young-and-pretty preacher's daughter, Miss Giddens, who goes off to an English manor and becomes the governess for a pair of orphans whose uncle willfully neglects them. She begins to see visions of the children's deceased former governess and the estate's deceased valet who, according to the good-hearted maid (Megs Jenkins), were lewd, flawed people. The former governess was obsessively, masochistically in love with the n'er-do-well valet, a cruel, abusive man who had a Rasputin-like appeal and influence. The maid is ashamed to tell Miss Giddens of their proclivity to make love when and wherever they wanted--even if the innocent children were watching. In a scene that the director, Jack Clayton, cleverly withholds from us, Miss Giddens somehow learns from her predecessor that the old governess and valet can only be together (sexually) if they possess the children; the lecherous elders were, of course, the isolated kids' idols, and Flora and Miles seem to have taken on some of the lovers' characteristics (Miles, for instance, flirts with Miss Giddens and kisses her lips good night). Giddens, who exhibits no sexual urges of her own, wishes to protect the children and believes that if the truth can be wrung out of them they'll be saved. The children claim to not see the ghosts when Miss Giddens does, and the maid is content to not wake the children from this bad dream; she doesn't see the specters either, and is skeptical of Miss Giddens, but minds the governess's authority. It's never resolved whether ghosts are present and Giddens's truth-bating does not go as planned.

The Victorian writing and setting, and the early-’60s production enrich and confound the sexual analogies. The children are referred to as "the innocents," but, if Miss Giddens is correct, they've been unwittingly corrupted. But is our virtuous, virginal heroine correct? Is the maid right in trying not to disturb the children’s' idyll, and what would it mean if she did? Since we're not clear on whether their excessively childlike behavior is really "innocent" or, in actuality, corrupted, we're not sure whether Miss Giddens' virtue is devoted to postponing their sexual awakening or whether or not that is a good or bad thing. If Giddens is right, then their sexuality is improper (both by Victorian and modern standards): possessed, the kids are made to be incestuous. However, they show no tangible signs of being truly harmed, and, as with many horror movies, we're forced to doubt the supernatural as much as we are made to believe in it. Although the movie never truly "frightened" me, I think its leaving me with these questions was enough to make it a chilling, intellectual and satisfactory experience.

The direction is simple and fluid and even Clayton's montages hardly seem dated (although sometimes the tendentious score does). Freddie Francis's vivid grayscale photography doesn't hurt (although the framing itself is hurt when not presented in its proper aspect ratio) and neither does the traditionally Victorian production design. Also, I'm sure that the film owes a lot to Truman Capote, who co-wrote the movie with John Mortimer and William Archibald in the midst of writing "In Cold Blood"--his spaciousness and journalistic formality in that book fit snugly here.

"The Innocents" in mood and manner has left its mark on more recent psychological-horror movies like "The Shining" and "The Others." If those movies appeal to you, then don't let this one's age be an impediment to your seeing it.

Sid and Nancy

2008-05-20T21:17:00.000-04:00

Sid (Gary Oldman) and Nancy (Chloe Webb) are well-played, considering how little the movie reveals about them. The heroin-addled vicissitudes of the Sex Pistols' bassist and his beloved floozy seem to stretch on forever, though, historically, the setting isn't longer than two years; and, although the movie mostly improves as it goes on, its heroes never become much more than deviant morons fueled by (particularly on Nancy's part) self-indulgence. Their love for one another, though passionate, seems arbitrary. This is probably because the director, Alex Cox, doesn't give us any context--we're given next to nothing about the characters' histories or the punk movement that they were a part of. "Sid and Nancy," which has been denounced by Johnny Rotten, is carried by its angry, laudatory verve, but not much else.

Superbad

2008-05-15T15:56:00.000-04:00

The comedy in Superbad works, I think, because of the absurd innocence behind the characters’ attempt to lose theirs. From the Animal House perspective—which generated a large degree of commercial, youth-oriented schlock in its wake—the kids are cynical narcissists living for the trashed weekend hook-up. In Mean Girls, the kids are the slick products of a sophisticated farce—honestly depicted, but detached from reality. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, however, who wrote the first draft of Superbad while they were adolescents themselves, are far from detached; they are only so far beyond high school age—and have made much of themselves in the meantime. Thus, they portray the banal, rockin’-the-suburbs rites of passage with very balanced nostalgia.

The last-party-of-high school, trying-to-buy-liquor-underage, gotta-get-the-girl coming-of-age superstructure of Superbad is nothing new. And, technically, neither are Seth (Jonah Hill) or Evan (Michael Cera); the corpulent bore and his lanky sidekick predate the teen movie by a long shot. Even the much-lauded deluge of “dirty words” is just Porky’s: The Next Generation. Don’t other critics get that censorship (and teenagers’ vocabularies, upon seeing these movies) is continually getting laxer? (Using swear words isn’t really boldness on the filmmakers’ part.) What works is not the all-too-universal plot line, but the lovingly absurd point of view, which consumes it. With the penis drawings and, in a lazier way, the dialogue, Goldberg and Rogen are livening up the usual circumstances; it becomes a farce, all right, but one that teenagers would want to write about themselves. The writers (Rogen was 25 when Superbad came out) aren’t reliving their high school past; they’re rewriting it as they wish it had been—but, fortunately, they’re not narcissists.

Why else would Rogen (also executive producer) cast himself as one of the cops that picks up Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and takes him for a joyride to prove that grown-ups can have fun, too? (He’s not trying to convince just Fogell of that.) Teen movies often feed into teenage self-absorption and pretend that the adult world is like some weird, parallel dimension beyond the viewer’s scope (or interest). When adults are actually given dialogue, it might as well be the wonk-wonk-wonk of the Peanuts’ parents. Mom and Dad don’t make an appearance in Superbad, either, but the sequences with those strange creatures beyond the drinking age are generally the best. Quasi-virginal Seth acts as a shrewd pragmatist, blackmailing a shady addict into drawing them to a lurid house party. David Edelstein of New York compared the scene where Evan is made to sing for a group of cokeheads in a bedroom to Dean Stockwell’s orgasmic ditty in Blue Velvet, but I think Edelstein got it in reverse. As in the David Lynch film, the kids aren’t the surreal spectacle, the postlapsarian grown-ups are. It’s a strange world these twenty- and thirty-somethings are mired in, but the great irony is that this is just what the party Seth and Evan would be relegated to in a few years time—high school is indeed a “magical” age.

The unscrupulous cops—Animal House brothers that, much to their chagrin, graduated—are even queasier role models. Their target-practice, drunk-driving tomfoolery would be a nightmare in Training Day; it’s a testament to these filmmakers that it comes off comically in Superbad. The teen-triumvirate wants to get out of high school “accomplished”; the policemen want back in. The cops’ sentimentality keeps them from being immoral buffoons, but the level of sentiment is just right: they don’t want to get back into the pool so much as they just want to dip their feet in. Otherwise, the fantasy would become acridly anti-adult, and the cops’ woebegone misanthropy would be a stone-cold bummer.

I’d be remiss not to mention the actors, though they’ve been greatly publicized elsewhere. Cera’s Evan is not naïve: he’s sweetly, shyly moral. He’s in opposition to the brutal masculine figure who’d come back into style with the Burger King commercials of a few years back; in fact, his femininity is made into a joke—but not a cruel one. Cera blends goodwill with good timing, and exudes a cowboy’s laconic chivalry and conscientiousness without the kind of ego that fosters pretensions of superiority. When he says, matter-of-factly, that he wants to respect women, you believe him. Hill, on the other hand... I can identify with the bullies who want to beat this violently undersexed loudmouth up. But his seeming authenticity in this role is also his strength. It’s almost impossible (and undesirable) to play this role without irony; he doesn’t, but neither does he wink at the camera. Mintz-Plasse is such an authentic dork (being as he was, an actual high school student at the time) that saying anything more about him would be superfluous. (Except maybe, Why does everyone think his McLovin license is such comedic gold? It just passed over me, I guess.)

I’m sure that Superbad will soon join the pantheon of generational teen movies, somewhere between Empire Records and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and up there it deserves a place. I’m certain, too, that this is exactly the kind of movie that will become iconic of this generation and decade (even though its 70s-chic will seem confusing), and will gloss over, to some, all the bad memories of high school. One shouldn’t forget, however, that it has the failings of all its antecedents, as well: the two-dimensional, all-their-shit-together mythical girls, for instance. But, it’s a small, winsome movie (even a nicely lighted one, for what it’s worth) that gears one up for illicit summertime partying.

Atonement

2008-05-15T14:58:00.002-04:00

Atonement is so pleasingly old-fashioned that one might believe, save for a few details, that it was up for Best Picture of 1946. One can safely assume that the filmmakers were aiming for the kind of “greatness” that romances of this stripe have attained in the past; in those terms, Atonement has achieved it. Its psychology is no more advanced than that of a Gone with the Wind or Doctor Zhivago or Titanic, but it’s a grand tear-jerker—a high-class chick-flick.

The early scenes, at a stately English manor, are presented as though Gosford Park was decades away. There’s the pristinely-beautiful starlet-lover, Cecelia (Keira Knightley); her Victorian dowager mother; her unappealing, rich fiancé; his foppish, absurdly élitist industrialist-friend; the starlet’s true love, Robbie (James McAvoy), a gentle soul of lesser means who is about to enroll in medical school and prove his worth as a credit to his class; and the starlet’s little sister, Briony (the airy blonde Saoirse Ronan), whose name smells of salt and who pines for Robbie, but is too young and awkward to nab him. All in the span of a day, Robbie accidentally sends Cecelia a letter expounding on his longing for her “cunt,” which Briony reads and is disgusted by. Briony catches Robbie and Cecelia finally consummating their love in the library; later, when Briony sees a man (who we do not see) raping her pre-teen cousin in the woods, she blames the crime on Robbie. He’s sent to prison, and, at the break of World War II, opts to become a soldier instead.

Like Wind or Zhivago or Titanic, the calamity here is but a means of separating our two star-crossed lovers. And, as with those three films, the historical disaster (the Civil War, Russian Revolution and sinking ship, respectively) is reproduced like a technician’s dream: one impressive dolly shot swivels around a war-torn city for minutes. But, even when the camera pulls back to reveal slaughtered schoolgirls stumbled upon by Robbie (meant to evoke, I’m certain, the famous crane shot revealing all the wounded Confederates in Wind), one doesn’t feel too much anti-war fury: Robbie’s perambulations as a soldier never show him any combat, only monumental weariness and the heart-squishing yearning for Cecelia.

Despite its gaudiness, though, the movie is not without feeling; there’s a very sensitive scene at a war hospital in which Briony (now a nurse) speaks to a dying French soldier. He’s missing pieces of his brain, and believes he knows and loves her. A counterpoint to this scene, however, is the incredibly graphic display of battle wounds after a battalion is rushed to the hospital. Like the schoolgirls, this doesn’t show us the horrors of war; it shows us how nasty a makeup job these filmmakers can provide. Why they thought this effect desirable in this movie, I don’t know.

The real innovation of Atonement, I suppose, is that the foci of the romance are not just Cecelia and her Robbie, but Briony the Bitch, as well. The title comes from her lifelong attempts at penance for slandering Robbie—a crime of passion. Guilt and the sultry are prime subjects for a romance novel, and they translate cleanly into this epic spectacle because the writers and the director, Joe Wright (a name not quite as epical as Cecil B. DeMille’s), seem earnest about featuring the pathos, but balance that earnestness with an ability to keep thrusting the plot (through sometimes-confusing flashbacks and forwards) in the same way that Robbie wishes to thrust Cecelia. Unfortunately, as they are such darling sweethearts, that thrust sometimes includes mantras like “Come back to me!” and “This story will resume!” But the cinematography (by Seamus McGarvey) is so classically grandiose that one feels that it’s natural for Pvt. Robbie to run after Cecelia’s truck as it drives away. And McAvoy and Romola Garai (the older Briony, and a good double for Ronan) give their roles an elegant, utterly British intensity. One moment, however, is irreparably campy—a purplish attempt at foreshadowing: through a window, Briony sees an old woman waddle down the street with a cart during an important scene, and the viewer laughs his way right out of the film.

Here’s a question: Why are war romances (not combat movies such as Platoon and Saving Private Ryan) so popular at such queasy times? The Civil War somehow provided pleasurable escape for those about to face World War II, and now, as we are entrenched in Iraq and the War on Terror and cynicism, this throwback goes up for Best Picture. It’s not a question one can satisfactorily answer in a small space; but maybe by making our previous conflicts seem grotesque in a glamorous, fantastical way, and, further, turning them into passionate duologues between two lovely lovers, we feel less troubled by the problems at hand—they devolve to the interpersonal level. Regardless, soggy—sometimes even sloppy and hole-ridden—material like this can make for a compleat guilty pleasure, if not a “great” movie.

Michael Clayton

2008-03-10T01:20:00.001-04:00

"Michael Clayton" is a direct descendant of the corruption-themed thrillers of the seventies (such as "Serpico" and "Chinatown"), but it loses nothing in dropping the characteristic downer ending. With the possible exception of "Atonement," which I've still yet to see, "Clayton" is the least arty of the Best Picture nominees (in terms of style--not necessarily substance), but it's terse, slick, exciting and one hell of a polemical. Films like this sometimes go slack and take a pedantic piddle, but this one's tight, bouncy and smart. Tony Gilroy, the writer and director (this is his first go at the latter), has a knack for giving potentially-shopworn sentiments an entertaining kick (such as taking the profusion of anti-lawyer bigotries and turning them into "The Devil's Advocate"). He doesn't disappoint here; he draws out his characters and gives them so much to do in so little time (the movie spans less than a week) that the proficient actors in those parts can't but sparkle--it may be from exhaustion. It certainly looks that way with George Clooney (Clayton), the tired fixer who finally wants out (an old standard, but one that's frenetically enlivened here); he was at one time kindred to the broad hero of "Thank You for Smoking," but has finally crashed to planet earth. His situation is so bad it would be "Kafka-esque" if he had a spare moment to think it through. The only really substantial problem with this movie is that it has too many characters in too many places--some look like others and, though there's a tight Hollywood wrap-up, one's not entirely sure of everybody's affiliation at the end--but that's like saying the movie is too interesting. It doesn't give you the aesthetic thrill ride that "There Will Be Blood" does, but "Clayton" stays blissfully above the speed limit.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

2008-02-11T00:14:00.001-05:00

Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a wild ride, but in the end, an unsubstantial one. The movie becomes slack when Raoul Duke/Hunter Thompson (Johnny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) go to Vegas for a second round; only bits and pieces match the zingy high of the first half, such as Thompson whipping his battered white Cadillac onto an airport runway, an ether walk (that Gilliam seems to have borrowed from his Monty Python days) and Thompson literally running into himself in San Francisco, 1965. The movie abandons the surreal social satire of the early scenes—the “electric snake” comes chiefly to mind—for not-so-subtle jabs at a square narc officer convention and muddled hoopla about the failure of the sixties and the American dream. This may be effective in the book, but in the movie the sixties spirit seems to have been squashed by meandering drug bingers like Gonzo and, to a lesser degree, Thompson. The fail-safe is that the movie is such a ripped quagmire that it seems to mean something, anyway—particularly if when you view the film, you’re going by its characters’ examples.

Regardless, the initial wackiness is as great as Brazil or 12 Monkeys and maybe even a little bit more disorienting; you literally stumble out of your seat when the movie’s done. And the actors are as willfully cartoonish as the direction. The movie’s decline is not ruinous; it’s merely a comparative letdown.

Thank You for Smoking

2008-01-22T00:46:00.001-05:00

"Thank You for Smoking" leaves the kind of bitter taste in your mouth that cigarettes do. In its conception of the world everyone's either a sap or a douche bag. It's libertarianism taken to an extreme--a moral vacuum wherein nobody's to be trusted. Its depiction of lobbyists as insidious, amoral spinners is warranted--making them agents of big tobacco, to boot, is almost a cheap shot. And so is turning their opponent, a well-meaning Vermont senator (William H. Macy), into an impotent prig--by the film's end, he wants to digitally remove cigarettes from old movies and replace them with coffee mugs and candy canes. I suppose that counts as satire, but come on... It's more of a jab at Spielberg's flashlights-for-guns swap in his re-release of "E.T." than the liberal politicians whose views the filmmakers (and novelist Christopher Buckley)--ironically--see as arrogant. That today's general public would buy the B.S. that the spin doctor sells about cigarettes' "positive attributes" is something that I can't buy; the movie, however, takes it for granted that they would and do. Even though the film is clever and lively, it's also farfetched, manipulative and--politics aside--too damn smug. When I agreed with some of the points it made, it made me feel kind of like a douche bag, too.

I Am Legend

2008-01-16T02:52:00.009-05:00

The Richard Matheson novel "I Am Legend" has been filmed twice before: with Vincent Price (at the height of his Roger Corman affiliation) and Charlton Heston (mid-way between "Planet of the Apes" and "Soylent Green") in the Will Smith role. It's hard to beat that pedigree. I wanted to see the new version in hopes that it would fulfill the camp quota that the earlier flicks must; to my surprise, the 2007 film is hardly campy at all--it's good in a good way.

One wouldn't think that such results would come from a movie directed by the maker of "Constantine" and pop music videos, Francis Lawrence, and Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter of recent Ron Howard pictures. But, combined with the talents of a venerable sci-fi writer, the filmmakers balance schlock and safety so perfectly that those specters are hardly evident. What the film does have is a successful conflation of diverse sources: "Cast Away," zombie movies and "Children of Men."

The "Cast Away" element comes from it being a largely one-man show. It's Will Smith as the last man in post-Apocalyptic Manhattan, a virologist named Neville who spends his days fortifying himself against and trying to cure a wolf pack of subhuman zombies--victims of a pandemic caused by a cancer vaccine gone awry. His encounters with the "night-seekers," who--of course--are allergic to the sun, are wonderfully suspenseful. But they're all the better because you're so attached to Neville that the thought of losing him is terrifying. This, of course, would not be possible if Will Smith didn't give such a strong, endearing performance. He needs to hold up the movie and he does. To make his job easier, the story employs the old trick of giving him a loyal pooch, Sam. She's a relic of Neville's lost family (whose demise is revealed in flashbacks) and she's the only thing he has to hold on to, the only reason he has to not break down and reveal his utter desperation and underlying pessimism.

His character and our empathy for him drive the movie and Lawrence, surprisingly (but correctly), takes this for granted. The CG rendering of abandoned New York is remarkable, but, after the beginning, it's hardly dwelled on. We become unerringly accustomed to it like Neville has. In fact, the film opens with him hunting deer through Times Square--which is probably a wee bit too forested (it's only 2012, after all)--but the perversity of the situation is apparent. As much as Neville likes to pretend it's not, we learn more and more that the world we know is gone--and it's chilling. The acute isolation--and its effect on the psyche--is more "Twilight Zone" than horror movie. (Unsurprisingly, Matheson wrote several episodes of that show.)

Eventually, a few other stragglers--a Brazilian nun, Anna (Alice Braga), and a tight-lipped boy (Charlie Tahan)--show up and a horde of surprisingly resilient zombies break through Neville's defenses. It's a good, if perfunctory, action-film climax, but the traditional cat-and-mouse fun is mixed with a deep-seated fear for the heroes. When they get cornered, there really is no place else for them to go. The movie then makes a noble decision--an affirmation that Neville's work has been worthwhile. It's due to a last-minute contrivance, but it's a fair trade-off for the development of Neville's spiritual dilemma and his interplay with Anna.

"I Am Legend" is not without contrivances, genre conventions and storytelling deficiencies (it implies that the devolved zombies are evolving, but never follows up); however, overall, it's a remarkable piece of craftsmanship. Lawrence doesn't cheat you on any of the important elements of a science fiction-thriller: action, suspense, a thought-provoking sci-fi premise--and a compelling human element, to boot. It's not as inspired a movie as "Children of Men"--it's slicker--but it's an absorbing, effective piece of entertainment.

Juno

2008-01-07T13:08:00.000-05:00

Only one week into 2008 and "Juno" is up for several awards, among them a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Screenplay. The only award it deserves is one that doesn't exist: Phoniest Movie of 2007. The script, by Diablo Cody, is almost as horrendous as its writer's pen name: none of its characters are remotely believable; they're just quirkiness personified. It's an unholy marriage of the worst of indie-film snarkiness, "Family Guy"-paced reference slinging and treacle.

The first act seems to be a solipsism centered around sixteen-year-old Juno MacGruff (Ellen Page, whose character's very name is quirky nonsense); she gets knocked up by Paul (Michael Cera) and decides to give her baby up to an older couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). When she meets the surrogate parents, she's a fount of bizarre, insensitive comments, mostly aimed at Garner's consummate yuppie, but they might as well have been directed at Margaret Dumont from an old Marx Brothers movie (although the lines would have been far wittier in that); miraculously, Garner doesn't hear or react to a word of Juno's "zany" antics. Even worse, Bateman is an erstwhile grunge rocker, which gives Juno an opportunity to list all of the cool music she listens to such as Patti Smith and The Stooges. It's nothing but the filmmakers dropping names in order to pick up some free hipster credibility; the whole movie is artificially cool, but truly, deeply square.

(The music that's actually in the movie is folky and somnolent. It reminds me of something Roger Ebert mentioned in his thirtieth anniversary review of "The Graduate": the Simon and Garfunkle soundtrack in that film is "safe"--better suited, therefore, for lackadaisical Benjamin than femme infidel Mrs. Robinson.)

Ironically, the square, "poignant" moments were probably those I liked best, but even the most authentic scene was screwed up by the director, Jason Reitman. Garner is touching Juno's baby-swollen gut and talking to her future child, but the scene is set in the middle of a shopping mall. You'd think someone would think it strange to see a thirty-five-year-old woman groping a pregnant sixteen-year-old's stomach.

And Juno, the "offbeat" teenager who loves hard music, is as saintly square as the teens on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel; she's less punk than puck. The angel's only "sin" is having a single sexual encounter with a boy she loves--the big-hearted school dork. (Cera, as the dork, is one of the strong points of the movie. His lines aren't any better written than Page's, but his sweet, effeminized delivery of them makes the dialogue--if not more believable--more affecting.) Otherwise, she's in a perfectly loving relationship with supportive father and step-mother; off-handed jokes are made about drugs and alcohol, but these things don't seem to physically exist in this universe. Movies with subject matter like this one's are often applauded for being more "realistic" than your average "Can't Hardly Wait" or "Drive Me Crazy," but, despite the pregnancy, I don't think I've ever seen kids (or adults) as well-adjusted as these. This might as well be a "very special episode" of "Father Knows Best."

"Juno" is mildly funny--in a Vaudeville, eye-roller type of way--but it scant deserves any of the laudatory talk it's garnered. James Berardinelli calls it "the kind of the film where a viewer almost needs to look for a reason to dislike it for it not to work." Well, I didn't have to look too far to realize how sloppily plotted this was: key moments of the stories come quickly, illogically and without build-up. For instance, there's no mention of how Juno is treated as the girl-who-got-pregnant at her high school until it's suddenly a big deal (and even then, we see no real evidence of it). Also, Bateman, the likable ex-rocker, turns pedophile douche bag awfully quick; he becomes so low that there's no indication that he plans to even help out with raising the baby after divorcing Garner at the end.

And while my beef with Juno's (and everyone else's) so-called wisecracks may be personal preference, Ellen Page's performance is hardly internalized; she's okay with timing, but all the movie does is have her blab on and on--not as a self-defense mechanism, but bad writing. (In the actress' defense, Juno's dilemma is treated as nothing more important than the usual lovelorn teen-movie girl problems--she wonders if it's really possible for two people to be happy together forever.) Juno acts more sophisticated than she is, but not in the way real girls her age do; she delivers self-conscious lines that make it sound like she's a wizened sixty-year-old living it up in a sixteen-year-old's body. (Juno's friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) seemed more like a real girl of that age and was often funnier to me than the title character.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewers were right and this went on to be the next "Little Miss Sunshine," which despite its sitcom family foibles, had some genuine characters in original situations--and saved its contrivances for the end. "Knocked Up," which, like "Juno," was categorized as "realistic" and "hip," may have actually been; it was easy-going and playful and didn't have to mention the nineteen-seventies punk scene for audience approval. "Juno" pretends to be cooler and funnier than it really is; it's more like a real teenager than any featured in the movie.

Sweeney Todd

2007-12-30T14:53:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-02T19:01:00.003-05:00

“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

2007-12-02T18:50:00.001-05:00

[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

2007-12-01T18:15:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-18T02:45:00.000-05:00

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

2007-09-22T17:33:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-03T02:27:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-02T18:18:00.001-04:00

"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

2007-08-23T02:12:00.001-04:00

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

2007-08-14T12:41:00.001-04:00

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

2007-08-04T13:00:00.002-04:00

“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

2007-08-02T18:31:00.001-04:00

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

2007-07-20T00:02:00.001-04:00

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

2007-07-19T18:20:00.000-04:00

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.