Lost Highway / Inside Man

Lost Highway – August 14, 2007

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

Inside Man – August 10, 2007

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

Boston Legal

“Boston Legal” – August 4, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn – August 2, 2007

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