Wednesday, September 28, 2005

thing's still broken, but we've got backup now....

They replaced my hard drive, but it seems that they forgot to go over the corrupted bits from the old one...also, my CD drive bit the dust while in the shop and will be repaired by monday. IN the meantime, they gave me CD backups of my review files.

Here's the stuff I should have put up over the past week:

BUBBLE, USA,

Directed by
Steven Soderbergh

I’m not sure what inspired Steven Soderbergh and his writing partner Coleman Hough to do this thing, perhaps it was the budget (a few hours pay for one real movie star), perhaps it was acclaim for returning to indie roots with an entirely amateur production.

Martha (Debbie Doebereiner) is a doormat living somewhere along the Ohio/West Virginia border. She works at a doll factory and takes care of her disabled father. It seems that her “bestest friend” is her coworker Kyle (Dustin James Ashley), who has a couple of other jobs. This being the permanent recession in the Midwest, everybody has to have at least three jobs. These are unfortunate nobodies living lives of quiet desperation. The kind of thing beginning filmmakers like to make films about.

While we’re being bored to tears, in comes Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), a single mother who’s far prettier than the oldish, dowdy Martha. Rose is a manipulative bitch and a bit of a thief to boot. Therefore she has to die. Who did it? This is the most obvious murder mystery in many a year. I’m not exactly sure why such a major talent as Soderbergh would make a film as amateurish as this one. The script is boring, the acting atrocious, the direction is poor,...what the hell happened here? I had thought that his and Hough’s “Full Frontal” was the worst thing he ever did. But nooooooooo. This is a new low, an amateur film by a consummate professional. Soderbergh should be ashamed of himself.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (USA)

Written and Directed
by Noah Baumbach

The breakup of a marriage is something that has fascinated literary types for many a century, and like the beasts in the title, the two participants frequently fight to the death. The question is which is the squid and which is the whale. We’re never actually sure.

This is also a tale about ambiguity and pretentiousness. Bernard(Jeff Daniels) and Joan(Laura Linney) have been married for going on twenty years. He’s a famous writer, and she’s about to become one. They’ve got two kids, Walt(Jesse Eisenberg) being in the latter part of high school and Frank(Owen Kline) about enter it.

All of the above quartet are highly intelligent morons. If you look up the word “arrogant” you would find Bernard’s picture. We soon find out that Joan has been cheating on Bernard for a few years. The kids find out about it as the parents complain about each other. Soon they’re separated and making the extreme effort to turn the kids against the other parent. This, to some extent actually works. Not only do the two brothers turn against one of the parents, it drives young Frank to drink and sexual deviancy.

Meanwhile, Bernard starts shacking up with one of his students(Anna Paquin) and Joan starts going out with a local tennis pro(William Baldwin), who’s also Frank’s tennis instructor. This makes things worse.

This is one of those movies that’s like a train wreck. It’s horrifying, but you can’t take your eyes off of it. It’s not what you’d call enterainment, although it has some really good performances and is morally instructive.
However, it’s not really worth the money.

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Romania)

Written and Directed
by Cristi Puiu

Feature versions of TV shows very rarely work. The reason is that there’s no real reason for them. Sometimes however, a filmmaker of genius may figure out how to steal a basic idea in an original way, which is the case here. A fan of “ER,” filmmaker Cristi Puiu wanted to do a Romanian version, so he decided to have his doctors and paramedics deal two disasters one quite major, and one quite small.

The big one is in the background. A bus full of tourists has been slammed by a truck, causing a major multiple vehicle collision and dozens and dozens of casualties, and we don’t see any of the victims up close, or the accident at all because we are focusing on the small one, the one mentioned in the title of the film.

Mr. Lazarescu(Ioan Fiscuteanu) is a retiree living in a Bucherest flat with his numerous cats and lots of liquor. Today, he’s got a whopper of a headache and painful digestive system. Unable to take it anymore, he calls the paramedics, and when they don’t show up, he goes to his next door neighbors(Doru Ana and Dana Dogaru) and asks for pills.

The wife doesn’t like our hero because he’s a drunk, and introduced her husband to liquor, but she can see that Mr. Lazarescu is genuinely sick, so they take care of him until the paramedics,
Mioara(Luminita Gheorghiu) and Leo(Gabriel Spahieu), finally show up. Mioara examines him and knows the jig may be up.

Now the problems the two paramedics and Mr. Lazarescu face are formidable: first off Mr. L is a drunk, and in general most doctors are unsympathetic to alcoholism over in the former second world. Second is the first mentioned disaster, dozens and dozens of badly injured people who have priority.

This is not, as advertised a heartless system that ignores the sick, no, in fact Mr. L. gets the best of care under the circumstances. The doctors and nurses, except for maybe one or two, are treated completely sympathetically. We understand where they’re coming from, and Mr. L isn’t helping all that much with his own case.

Luminita Gheorghiu as the paramedic Mioara gives a really powerful performance, she’s the hero of the thing as she goes around trying to save Mr L not only from his ailment, but from the rest of the medical profession who are arrogant and venial, despite the honesty of their efforts. It’s one of those films where we root for almost everybody and is definitely worth a look.

I AM (Jestem)

Written and Directed
by Dorota Kedzierzawska

Children sometimes fall through the cracks. We’re never actually given our protagonist’s(Piotr Jagielski) name, sometimes he’s called Sonny boy, other times he’s called the Mongrel. Whatever he’s called nobody really likes him all that much. When he’s humiliated at a poetry recital by the powers that be at the orphanage he lives in, and is then given a choice between starvation and a meal he doesn’t like, he escapes and heads home.

This might have very well have been a mistake. For his mother is the town whore and he finds her sleeping with a client. He violently rejects her, then he rejects him. Nobody likes him back home, and it’s quite possible that he did something horrible, as all the kids in town try their best to beat the crap out of him.

He hides in an abandoned barged near a smallish mansion, where lives a cute little girl(Agnieszka Nagorzycka) with whom he has a chaste romance. She has self-esteem problems, so does he. She has plenty of food, so she feeds him. Nobody seems to care where he came from or where he’s going.

This is a rather sad and lyrical little film. The two lead kids are terrific, but while this is great for the film festival circuit or effete aficionados of cultured cinema, there’s no real market for this beyond the art house.

METHADONIA

Directed by
Michel Negroponte,

Methadonia is a land of junkies. Methadone doesn’t get you all that high, but getting off of it is harder than the heroin it’s supposed to replace. Filmmaker Michel Negroponte follows several clients of one clinic over a period of years while they try to get their lives together.

This is almost a different world, and we root for the junkies as they try to either get straight or get a life. Some do and some don’t. The majority of the people followed are either middle aged or downright old. Which makes it all the more heartrending. One generally thinks of junkies as just kids, and this is far from the case.

The film is going to appear on HBO just after the festival ends, and it might be worth a look. Very educational.

Friday, September 23, 2005

AAAAAAAARG!!!!!

My hard drive just crashed!!!! fuckity fuck fuck fuck!!!! I'll have about six or seven reviews in about a week.

sorry folks....

NY film festival opener

Good Night. And, Good Luck

Written and Directed
byGeorge Clooney

Nowadays, when color is sooo much cheaper than it used to be, there has to be a reason for going black & white. There is, and we’ll get to it in a moment, but first, there’s the question of the age of the intended audience.

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) was censured by the US Senate on December 2, 1954 a little less than fifty-one years ago. That means that everyone who was alive at the time is in middle age, and those who were old enough to still remember watching it on TV live is eligible for Social Security retirement benefits. In other words, to the large majority of the people what happened here is ancient history.

For ancient history, you need context, which is what this film hasn’t got. We start in 1958, and famed journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) is getting an award for his achievements, and he begins his acceptance speech with a scathing attack on Television. It was as easy to attack TV back then as it is today, the only difference being that there were only three networks [Dumont having gone broke], and Color TV had only been just invented, which means that when we flashback to the main action of the film, everything on the tube was in Black and White.

Which is why the rest of the movie is as well. The images on the small screen match the images on the big screen, and everything looks the same. It’s a really nifty conceit. But we really don’t get anything else, like who just WAS Joe McCarthy, and what was so terrible about the Communist menace that the whole country was terrorized?

The beginning of 1954 was a rather good time for CBS news. With production costs lower than most sitcoms and dramas, news documentaries were the crown jewel in the crown of what was called the Tiffany network. Murrow, his producer
Fred Friendly(George Clooney) and boss Sig Mickelson(Jeff Daniels)
Were worried about ratings more than anything else, and when there was a small story about an Army lieutenant named Milo Redulivitch who was given a general discharge because his father and sister were liberals, or possibly worse, the concept of guilt by association rightly shocked CBS into doing an entire prime time TV show on it.

But the show would be controversial and the sponsor had backed out. That’s ONE sponsor. We need to know context, and we don’t get it. The idea that a TV anchorman can actually pay for the airtime of his show instead of commercials is something we can’t imagine. The loyalty oaths and the fact that producer Joe Wershba(Robert Downey, Jr.) and his wife Shirley(Patricia Clarkson) had to keep their marriage a secret are bizarre as well.

While the lack of context may make the film slightly unintelligible for a younger and less history savvy audience, the acting more than makes up for it. Strathairrn has given brilliant performances in countless movies and is one of the hardest working men in the movies, this is one of his few starring roles, and it looks like the Oscar race is going to be between Phillip Seymore Hoffman and him. The supporting cast, from Frank Langella (as CBS president William Paley) on down are all excellent. For context, you should rent a Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show” before seeing this….

NY Film Festival opener

•Good Night. And, Good Luck

Written and Directed
by George Clooney

Nowadays,when color is sooo much cheaper than it used to be, there has to be a reasonfor going black & white. There is, and we’ll get to it in a moment, butfirst, there’s the question of the age of the intended audience.

Sen.Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) was censured by the US Senate on December 2,1954 a little less than fifty-one years ago. That means that everyone whowas alive at the time is in middle age, and those who were old enough tostill remember watching it on TV live is eligible for Social Security retirementbenefits. In other words, to the large majority of the people what happenedhere is ancient history.

For ancient history, you need context, whichis what this film hasn’t got. We start in 1958, and famed journalist EdwardR. Murrow (David Strathairn) is getting an award for his achievements, andhe begins his acceptance speech with a scathing attack on Television. Itwas as easy to attack TV back then as it is today, the only difference beingthat there were only three networks [Dumont having gone broke], and ColorTV had only been just invented, which means that when we flashback to themain action of the film, everything on the tube was in Black and White.

Whichis why the rest of the movie is as well. The images on the small screen matchthe images on the big screen, and everything looks the same. It’s a reallynifty conceit. But we really don’t get anything else, like who just WAS JoeMcCarthy, and what was so terrible about the Communist menace that the wholecountry was terrorized?

The beginning of 1954 was a rather good timefor CBS news. With production costs lower than most sitcoms and dramas, newsdocumentaries were the crown jewel in the crown of what was called the Tiffanynetwork. Murrow, his producer
Fred Friendly(George Clooney) and boss Sig Mickelson(Jeff Daniels)
Wereworried about ratings more than anything else, and when there was a smallstory about an Army lieutenant named Milo Redulivitch who was given a generaldischarge because his father and sister were liberals, or possibly worse,the concept of guilt by association rightly shocked CBS into doing an entireprime time TV show on it.

But the show

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The IFP market

This years IFP market is actually very disappointing. The panels were actually rather uninformative and few people were submitting stuff into the market. There were a few trailers for things, like a feminist cartoon series and an episode in the PBS "American Masters" series (apparently PBS doesn't pay for most of each episode and the filmmakers have to find funding elsewhere) there were still a number of screens empty and the number of people is well down from recent years...or at least that's the way it was in the morning.

I also attended a panel on why runaway productions in Canada are the thing to do. There were really no reasons, and they mostly talked about completion bonds and other forms of insurance. You can get insurance here too...

The NY film festival will open on friday and I'll start posting some reviews then.

Monday, September 19, 2005

The New York Film festival

Here's a list of the films at the NYFF; Films with reviews somewhere in the blog are listed with an asterisk(*):

Good Night, and Good Luck (Opening Night)
*Breakfast on Pluto (Centerpiece)
*Cache (Hidden) (Closing Night)
*Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
Bubble
*Capote
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
*L’Enfant (The Child)
*Gabrielle
I Am
*Manderlay
Methadonia
*Paradise Now
*The President's Last Bang
Regular Lovers
Something Like Happiness
*The Squid and the Whale
The Sun
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
A Tale of Cinema
Three Times
Through the Forest
Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Who's Camus Anyway?
The Passenger

That's about half.

Next Event

The IFP market, also known as the independent Feature Film Market, has been going on for a few decades now and unfortunately has been going simultaneously with the press screenings at the NY film festival for about five years or so.

I first went to the IFFM eleven years ago, well before I was doing my current gig. The opening night party was pretty much a waste, the beer was free but there wasn't enough room to breathe. I figure that since I've got the time a couple of days this week I"ll go to some of the conferences, which are always interesting.

Unlike Toronto, the NYFF people are generally pissed off when you put up stuff before that fest actually starts. Besides, I"ve already posted more than half of the flix playing during the blogging of Cannes and Toronto.

Unlike Cannes and Toronto, the NYFF serves the press free food in the morning. They have good coffee, too.

Friday, September 16, 2005

The final batch

I'm home, but the festival still goes on. The following are opening up there today. There's a couple of more reviews lying around half written, but I won't post them until they open in theaters down here, in the meantime, I saw the Green Cokatoo, a very old flick with a script by Graham Green. It was the first press screening of the New York Film Festival. Different animatl all together...now here's the last from Toronto:

IN HER SHOES

Directed by
Curtis Hanson

One can always expect greatness from Cutis Hanson. He’s one of the few directors to have batted a thousand in the last decade. I was somewhat scared that a chick flick about lost grandmothers might be a little to fluffy for his sensibilities, but his and writer Susannah Grant’s adaptation of Jennifer Weiner's novel is just about perfect.

This tale of wicked stepmothers, long-lost grandmothers and redemption centers around Maggie Feller (Cameron Diaz) and her sister Rose (Toni Collette). The sisters are the exact opposites of one another. Rose is a successful in business and unsuccessful in love, and Maggie can’t seem to get a job, but men fall at her feet. Rose is honest, Maggie’s a thief. The things that unite them are love of their father(Ken Howard) and hate for their wicked stepmother (Candice Azzara). When Maggie gets thrown out of her parents’ house yet again, she hunkered down on Rose’s couch, which doesn’t help matters much, especially, when she’s caught screwing Rose’s first possible boyfriend in many years.

So Rose kicks Maggie out as well, and while returning briefly to Dad’s place to rob it, she discovers evidence of a grandmother she thought long dead, and decides to go to Florida to sponge off HER for a while.

With everything established to the filmmaker’s satisfaction, we go to the second and this world is ripped to shreds. Rose goes on a “leave of absence” from her job and becomes a dog walker and Maggie begins to get to know her new grandmother, Ella(Shirley MacLaine).

Much of the rest of the movie is about happy seniors and the sister’s change of life. Ella forces Maggie to get a job at the old age home, and begins to thrive. She meets a blind professor(Norman Lloyd) at her job, who helps her solve the problem that’s been holding her back and Rose finds love with a former coworker(Mark Feuerstein). But the shattered relationship between the sisters is an unspoken sore point, and it’s up to Ella to make it right.

Yeah, this is a chick flick, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Guys will find this totally painless to sit through, and the ladies will absolutely adore it. It’s a perfect date film. Go.

THE MYTH

Written and directed
by Stanley Tong

With Hollywood not exactly breaking down his doors anymore, Jackie Chan still has a huge fanbase, and with foreign backing can still do whatever he wants. This time he’s done a schizophrenic film archeology and love, the latter works and the former doesn’t.

The film goes back and forth between 222 BC and the present day, and while it gets close to greatness at times, it doesn’t make it and finally falls apart.

The film begins two and a quarter millennia ago, where the First Emperor of Qin’s great general Meng Yi(Jackie Chan) and his vast army have been dispatched to pick up the Korean princess Ok Soo (Kim Hee Seon), who’s to become “Grand Concubine Li”, or a minor wife of his imperial highness. However, her former betrothed, has come to rescue her, and a dramatic battle begins. This is epic stuff, and Chan is back in top form, but then it’s all a dream when

Jack the archeologist (Jackie Chan) wakes up in his every expensive Hong Kong barge, where he meets his old pal William (Tony Leung Ka Fai), who is doing research on a mysterious substance he’s heard about, which is allegedly somewhere in India.

While we go back to the romance and adventure in the wilds of China in the third century BC and have a wonderful time, The present gets pretty bad. The ancient temple is still in use.

Jackie Chan’s usual shtick is still pretty good, and the kung fu comedy fights are still funny, but the reaction to some pretty serious crimes by pretty Indian maidens like Samantha(Mallika Sherawat), is beyond the pale. The supernatural stuff is okay, one can suspend disbelief for stuff like that if it’s done logically. It’s the more realistic stuff which is unbelievable. The official villain(Sun Zu) is even worse, his place in the plot is completely counterproductive.

The political statements are completely nonsensical PC stuff and also takes away from story. The final climax in the modern times is downright awful while the one in ancient times is brilliant. The juxtaposition between the two is most disconcerting. But it’s worth a bargain matinee at least.

WALLACE & GROMIT - THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

Written and Directed by
Nick Park and Steve Box

Sometimes it’s not that good an idea to go too deep. I’ve always liked the “Wallace and Gromit” cartoons. They deserved to get Oscars®. The gags were always brilliant and the animation was a joy to watch. That being said, there’s always a danger that when a cartoon’s “going feature” would make stretch the characters a bit too thin, plothole absurdities that are perfectly acceptable in a shorter work [Wallace and Gromit go to the moon to sample the green cheese] kind of grate in a longer one.

The dichotomy isn’t evident at first. The first ten minutes of the film is sheer genius. Wallace (Peter Sallis) and Gromit(Himself) are running a humane pest contol service called Anti-pest-o, and whenever there’s trouble in the veggie patch, our heroes are out there like Batman and Robin (the TV version) to save the day. This part works, for the most part. It would have been nice if they had gone further, like having them humanly getting rid of termites and imprisoning them in little ant farms,

But in this case, the nasty little vermin are bunnies, and you can’t kill bunnys, right? So we see Gromit feeding them in the bunny prison in the basement. The bunnies escape into the kitchen. It’s funny, the gags work as gags, but the wince factor begins to creep up. Fortunatly, Box and Park manage to punch the whole thing up with gags.

After W&G save Lady Tottington’s (Helena Bonham Carter) palatial estate from a plague of bunnies and humiliating her would-be boyfriend Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) in the process, Wallace decides to use his mind control-o-matic on the little bastards to keep them from being vegetarians!

It goes horribly wrong, and at this point so does the film. This is not supposed to be “LA Confidential” but until the climax, where the whole thing picks up steam again and winds up with an uproarious bang!, it drags like a limp cauliflower. Go for the beginning and the end and try to endure the middle.

ROMANCE & CIGARETTES

Written and Directed
by John Turturro

I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. John Turturro got some of his dear friends together and made himself a musical in someone’s garage. The results are uneven at best, and that’s being kind. I don’t know what the producers were telling the investors, but it must have been some story.

This is what might be termed a “karaoke” musical. It’s the story of a construction worker named Nick Murder(James Gandolfini) who’s having an affair with a sex shop clerk named Tula (Kate Winslet), which is driving his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) to distraction.

Kitty is aided in getting back at Nick with two groups of people, their three daughters(Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker and Aida Turturro), the latter two look almost as old as their mom, and
Cousin Bo (Christopher Walken), who pretends to be Elvis or Tom Jones, depending on what angle he’s shot in. The whole thing is for the most part extremely boring. We don’t care about any of the characters, as most of the “kids” are way too old to be believed. I love M-L Parker, but…jeez!

The songs are what’s most disappointing. Either lip-synch or cut out the original singer, don’t have the person sing along to the record, it looks really dumb. In fact the entire film looks that way and while it might have been an interesting experiment on paper, it sure as hell isn’t on film…blech!

L’ENFANT (Belgium/France)

Written and Directed by
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Sometimes eavesdropping can change one’s perspectives on a subject. At a press screening for a different film, I overheard someone say that this film was a Christian allegory. It dawned on me that it was actually quite right, and one of the more effective ones to boot.

Bruno(Jeremie Renier) is a small-time hood desperately in need of redemption. He basically just hangs out and manages a network of young pickpockets he recruits from grade schools. He’s charming, but completely disreputable, a thoughtless prick. His girlfriend Sonia(Deborah Francois) loves him anyway, and when she returns from the hospital with their infant son, she discovers that he’s sublet her apartment and is living in a homeless shelter.

She’s not very happy, but she’s still in love, and he’s willing to help out with the kid…or so she thinks. What he’s going to do is take it to an illegal adoption agency and sell it for a few thousand euros.

When Sophie finds out what he did, she faints. It’s at this point he realizes what he’s done. She then denounces him to the police and he has to get the kid back.

In general he get what he deserves for the rest of the film and in another misadventure with one of his stable of pickpockets(Jeremie Segard) gets in even more trouble.

The acting is wonderful. Renier does more with one expression than most actors do with their whole kit. It’s fun, infuriating and uplifting and it’s never boring. Great flick.

The delay

There was a ten PM press screening the night before last, and after two yesterday morning, I had to go home. Weather forced the plane to take off an hour after we boarded and I was too shagged to do any writing. The final batch will be up this evening. This is if there's anyone actually out there.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

the antepenultimate batch

This might actually be the penultimate batch actually. I've got as many as six screenings today, and then there are two or three tomarrow before I go home to New York. the last batch will probably get posted after I'm back and have already started my coverage of the NY film festival, the official press screenings of which start this morning.


There are two films which are not going to get much of a review: Takashis, in which Takiashi Kitano pays tribute to himself in an anarchic romp that doesn't make any sense, and the anti-american propaganda documentery Why We Fight which was produced by foreign governments.

We now present our next batch of reviews:

LITTLE FISH Australia

Directed by
Rowan Woods

Tracy Heart(Cate Blanchett) works in a video shop in suburban Sydney Australia. She very much wants to make her way in the world. She and her business partner have submitted a detailed business plan to several banks and the loan officers have all said it's a worthy project except for one small thing: Tracy is a recovering drug addict who's guilty of credit card fraud. So no go.

Her mother's(Noni Hazlehurst) ex-boyfriend, the retired soccer star
Lionel Dawson(Hugo Weaving) is the cause of it all. He's a junkie himself, and had supplied stuff to both Tracy and her brother
Ray(Martin Henderson) in the past, but they don't seem to hold it against him like their mother does. What makes the situation for him a bit worse is that his dealer, crime boss Brad Thompson(Sam Neill), is also his gay lover and is retiring from the business, leaving him high and dry.

Tracy's quandary about the bank loan, which she told everyone was approved, gets more complicated when her old boyfriend Johnny (Dustin Nguyen) arrives out of nowhere for the first time in years.

Nasty little melodramas like this are generally boring. The characters in the family are a bit more fully fleshed out than are sometimes done, and the acting is extremely good. Weaving shows he can do more than be an action villain like in the “Matrix” films, and Blanchette gives one of her better performances. But even with all it's many good points, it leads to an inevitable ending we see from the very beginning. One could do worse.

TRUST THE MAN

Written and Directed
by Bart Freundlich

Just because a film is an indie doesn't mean that it's somehow original or edgy. It also doesn't mean that it's bad either. So don't come to this thing with high expectations for something new and different, because this ain't.

This is the story of two siblings, Rebecca(Julianne Moore) is a minor movie star, and her younger brother Tobey (Billy Crudup) is a lazy good-for-nothing writer who's very successful at faking travel pieces while waiting around in his car for the alternate side of the street parking to alternate. She's married to Tom(David Duchovny), who's a retired ad exec currently living the life of a house-husband, taking care of their two kids. He's not married, but has been living with his aspiring novelist girlfriend Elaine(Maggie Gyllenhaal). The foursome are thick as thieves, and the brothers-in-law are the very best of friends.

We immediately realize that this very happy situation has to be destroyed and rebuilt in a neat and funny way. So it turns out that Tom is far hornier than Rebecca and isn't getting any, and that Elaine wants to raise a family and Tobey doesn't.

The twists and turns are fairly predictable and it's all very cutsie. The acting is really good. This is a killer cast and they do a very professional job. There is nothing necessarily WRONG with this film, it's just nothing special, that's all. It has some decent jokes and everything is likeably bland. Worth a matinee if it's raining….

AMERICAN GUN

Written and Directed
by Aric Avelino

Guns are bad. Polemics aren't nearly as bad as guns, but polemics about guns aren't particularly entertaining and usually are preaching to the choir.

We begin with a TV interview. This is the glue that binds the three otherwise unconnected stories together. Three years before to the day, Janet's(Marcia Gay Harden) elder son perpetrated a thinly disguised version of the Colombine tragedy, and we see her trying to spin her way out of any guilt for the murders. She's doing the interview because she badly needs the money to put her younger son
David(Christopher Marquette) through private school and thus avoid any conflicts with relatives of survivors.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a high school principal named Carl (Forest Whitaker) is interrogating a student named Jay(Arlen Escarpeta) about the latter's carrying around a loaded weapon on school grounds. He's a good kid, but he actually needs the damn thing for his job as a night watchman. Carl's fed up with his job, which he's devoted to, and his wife(Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon) is as well. We're just watching two tales of quiet desperation. Suffering for the sake of suffering.

But what are we to make of the other Carl(Donald Sutherland), the Virginia gunsmith, and his granddaughter Mary Ann(Linda Cardellini), who's forced to work at the shop while she goes to college by tradition. This really has no point, nor does the ending. This is polemic, and character doesn't mean all that much, although the cast is excellent and they act their asses off. This is a complete waste of time, and if you find it on cable, it might be worth not passing by, but actually PAY MONEY to see this in a theater? No way.

WALK THE LINE

Written and Directed
by James Mangold,

Musical biopics aren't always successful. For every “Ray” there's a “De Lovely.” It all depends on how the thing is marketed and by whom. Tales of southern musicians for some reason always seem to be popular, and Johnny Cash was one of the biggest of them all.

As is traditional with this sort of thing, we start about three-fourths the way in, in this case, we meet Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix)
waiting “backstage” at his immortal Folsom prison concert before flashing back to 1944 where our hero(Ridge Canipe) and his older brother Jack(Lucas Till) are picking cotton with their parents
(Shelby Lynne and Robert Patrick) somewhere in what was once Dixie. Jack dies tragically, and Dad blames the accident on Johnny and hates him forevermore…

Till turns into Phoenix and as such he joins the army winds up in Germany where he writes music and proposes marriage over the phone to his sweetheart Carrie(Shelby Lynne), and by the time their first kid is born, he's about to make his breakthrough in music, even though Carrie doesn't really like his career choice, and never does seem to like the idea of his going out on the road.

Of course on the road with the pioneers of rock'n'roll Elvis(Tyler Hilton), Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne), Waylon Jennings (Shooter Jennings), Roy Orbison (Johnathan Rice) and other usual suspects, our hero meets the beauteous June Carter(Reese Witherspoon) and there's the tempestuous premarital relationship which would last well over a decade. He has the usual ups and downs having to do with sex and drugs, he WAS a musician after all.

Witherspoon is brilliant. She's always brilliant. She was even wonderful in “Legally Blonde 2” which was otherwise horrid. Everybody else is actually pretty good too. If you like country music, you'll like the film. Even if you don't.

Till turns into Phoenix and as such he joins the army winds up in Germany where he writes music and proposes marriage over the phone to his sweetheart Carrie(Shelby Lynne), and by the time their first kid is born, he's about to make his breakthrough in music, even though Carrie doesn't really like his career choice, and never does seem to like the idea of his going out on the road.

Of course on the road with the pioneers of rock'n'roll Elvis(Tyler Hilton), Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne), Waylon Jennings (Shooter Jennings), Roy Orbison (Johnathan Rice) and other usual suspects, our hero meets the beauteous June Carter(Reese Witherspoon) and there's the tempestuous premarital relationship which would last well over a decade. He has the usual ups and downs having to do with sex and drugs, he WAS a musician after all.

Witherspoon is brilliant. She's always brilliant. She was even wonderful in “Legally Blonde 2” which was otherwise horrid. Everybody else is actually pretty good too. If you like country music, you'll like the film. Even if you don't.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

the preantepenultimane batch

MARY Italy/USA, Visions North American Premiere

Written and Directed
by Abel Ferrara

If there was ever a heartfelt plea for censorship and intolerance in recent years, it's this film. It's the revenge of the Orthodox against the heretics. Those who would question Christianity precisely as it has been taught must be punished, and will. That's the message of this sad little film.

Tony Childress(Matthew Modine) casts himself as Jesus Christ in a movie version of some of the gnostic gospels discovered in Egypt in 1945. In it, Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) playing Mary Magdalene, explains secret knowledge given to her by JC, much to the shock and horror of some of the other disciples. Playing Mary has given Marie religion, and rather than return to the 'States, she goes to Israel, where the filmmaker shows constant pictures of dying Palestinians.

Meanwhile, superstar network journalist Ted Younger (Forest Whitaker) is doing a series on “the real Jesus.” We already know about the real Jesus from the Gospels, there's no other way to go. Thus he must be severely punished by God. This happens when Jesus sends Ted's wife (Heather Graham) to the hospital with severe labor complications. When this happens he's interviewing a Jewish theologian who explains why the Jews killed Jesus. At first he likes Tony's film, but turns against it at Jesus' behest.

Ted is made to be an evil monster who demeans God for the sake of mammon. A genuine villain, and the protesters are deemed right. Censorship and intolerance of others views are celebrated and this is genuinely horrid. If you're tempted to see this crock of shit, take a deep breath and rent “Dogma” instead. You have been warned.

BEE SEASON, USA, Special Presentations World Premiere

Directed by Scott McGehee
and David Siegel

There's a tale in the Midrash that before God created the heavens and the earth, he created the Hebrew alphabet. For thousands of years, among both Jew and Gentile, the letters have been held to be receptacles of kind of magic.

Saul Naumann(Richard Gere) knows this all too well. A college professor in theology, he's been studying and teaching the Kabbala for years. He lives in Oakland with his biologist wife Miriam(Juliette Binoche), daughter Eliza(Flora Cross) and her older brother Aaron(Max Minghella). At first, they seem happy enough, each are overachievers to some extent and they're full of love….but then something happens.

Eliza wins a spelling bee. The school then enters her in the San Francisco area bee, but Saul didn't see the envelope among his many papers, so, she asks Aaron to take her. She wins that, too, and they go and tell Saul, who of course is thrilled. However, Aaron, who was the favorite, has lost some status, and he begins a search for God. Mom has been searching or God too, but in her own way.

Meanwhile, after some interrogation, Saul comes to believe that Eliza has the gift to become a master cabbalist at the tender age of eleven. This drives her brother away and maybe drives her mother mad. It's an extremely strange movie, which is highlighted with really good performances and some spectacular computer animation. The words fly off the page, so to speak, in more ways than one. It's very bizarre, and perhaps even worth the money for a ticket.

MISTRESS OF SPICES (United Kingdom),

Written and Directed by
Paul Mayeda Berges

The good Witch of Oakland, California is a beautiful woman named Til(Aishwarya Rai), who has imprisoned herself in a spice emporium as part of her vow to both rule and serve the vegetable powers of that inhabit the spices that she sells to the local hoi palloi. She also cannot use her magic powers to help herself or even touch another person's skin. If she breaks the rules, the spices will turn against her.

People come to her for advice and recipies and to have a white spell or two cast. All is going very well until she catches the eyes of an architect named Doug(Dylan McDermott). The war between the animal and vegetable powers has begun. Will the power of love overpower that of broccoli? Of course it does, but in this as in many another case, this is as silly as it is enjoyable, which is a great deal.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (USA)

Written and Directed
by Noah Baumbach

The breakup of a marriage is something that has fascinated literary types for many a century, and like the beasts in the title, the two participants frequently fight to the death. The question is which is the squid and which is the whale. We're never actually sure.

This is also a tale about ambiguity and pretentiousness. Bernard(Jeff Daniels) and Joan(Laura Linney) have been married for going on twenty years. He's a famous writer, and she's about to become one. They've got two kids, Walt(Jesse Eisenberg) being in the latter part of high school and Frank(Owen Kline) about enter it.

All of the above quartet are highly intelligent morons. If you look up the word “arrogant” you would find Bernard's picture. We soon find out that Joan has been cheating on Bernard for a few years. The kids find out about it as the parents complain about each other. Soon they're separated and making the extreme effort to turn the kids against the other parent. This, to some extent actually works. Not only do the two brothers turn against one of the parents, it drives young Frank to drink and sexual deviancy.

Meanwhile, Bernard starts shacking up with one of his students(Anna Paquin) and Joan starts going out with a local tennis pro(William Baldwin), who's also Frank's tennis instructor. This makes things worse.

This is one of those movies that's like a train wreck. It's horrifying, but you can't take your eyes off of it. It's not what you'd call enterainment, although it has some really good performances and is morally instructive.
However, it's not really worth the money.

NEVERWAS- World Premiere - Special Presentations

Written and Directed by
Joshua Michael Stern

Once upon a time, long, long ago. There was a boy named Christopher Robin. His father wrote a beloved fantasy book for children about him, and thus ruined poor C.R. Milne's life forever.

When Zachary Pierson(Ryan Drescher) was a little boy, his father, T.L. Pierson (Nick Nolte) wrote and illustrated a series of books on a magical place called Neverwas before they took him away to the looney bin. His death was one of those things that can ruin a kid's life, so he took his mother's maiden name as his own and when we meet Dr. Zach Riley (Aaron Eckhart) again, he's all grown up and a psychiatrist to boot, arriving at the hospital where his father spent most of his last years in order to help clean the place up and find out what exactly happened with his old man, something his mother
(Jessica Lange) heartally disapproves of. His new boss(William Hurt)
wouldn't have approved either.

But there are forces out there lying in wait for our hero. Maggie Paige (Brittany Murphy), an old friend from childhood, is a big fan of his father's books and is surreptitiously working on an article on the late TL. Also, is one Gabriel Finch (Ian McKellen) an inmate at the hospital who also has a fixation on T. L's books, but for slightly different reasons…

This is perfect material for someone like Terry Gilliam and is the film he probably should have made instead of “Tideland” or the “Brothers Grimm.” This is lots of fun as well as deep, and the characters are ones we can identify with. The acting is wonderful, Eckhart and McKellan give one of their best performances. Gandof lives, and it's here. This is worth seeing twice.

our first batch of the day

THE WAR WITHIN

Written and Directed
by Joseph Castelo

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That's the question of terrorism and always has been. The right says that it's Islam's fault, the far left says that it's America's fault. The Arabs fault the fictitious World Jewish conspiracy and so on and so forth. Their beef is generally based on lies, but that's neither here nor there.

We don't know what made the the Pakistani secret police kidnap a Pakistani engineer named Hassan (Ayad Akhtar) in Paris soon after 9/11, except that his brother was leading a violent, major protest of America's right to self-defense. The Chief Inspector in the torture room(Samrat Chakrabarti) says as much and shows him a photo before beating him up mercilessly. We can't be sure if he's guilty or not. The filmmakers make it look as if he may be innocent, but then why would the Pakistani ISI go to all the trouble of going all the way to France to kidnap him if there wasn't a case?

Cut to a few years later. Hassan is in a packing crate being offloaded a ship in Bayonne, New Jersey, where he's met by the local leader of a terrorist cell and given the task a few days hence, of blowing up Grand Central Station, one of the architectural wonders of New York. But in the meantime, he's got to go under cover, so he heads over to the home of his borther Sayeed(Firdous Bamji), where he's greeted with open arms.

Sayeed represents the best of what an immigrant should be. He's successful, charitable, and generally content with his life. He lives with his wife Farida(Sarita Choudhury),their son, Ali and his sister Duri(Nandana Sen), who had a crush on Hassan when the three of them were kids back in the old country.

This is a tale of perversion, the perversion of Islam that the bad guys [and they ARE the bad guys] are peddling to the much of the World, through a media that pretending to stand up for the underdogs just creates hatred and resentment for the fun of it.

Hassan destroys his host, the latter's family and their friends in the process. This is evil, pure and simple, shown in a clear light, for the most part. The acting is professional.
Akhtar, who cowrote the screenplay gives a cool and nuanced performance, Choudhury shows real passion, and the kid who plays Ali is a find. It should be seen.

THUMBSUCKER (USA)

Written and Directed
by Mike Mills

There will always be coming of age films about seniors in high school. Some will be good and some will be bad. It's a subject that will never go out of style.

Justin Cobb(Lou Pucci) is a typical high school senior. He's somewhere in the lower edge of typical. His vice isn't violence or drugs or anything, he just sucks his thumb, something that drives his parents(Tilda Swinton and Vincent D'Onofrio) nuts, and doesn't make him all that happy either. As his brotherJoel Cobb(Chase Offerle) compains: “You too busy being weird for anyone to notice I”ve got problems.”

So we've got your typical American dysfunctional family. The disappointed-in-life father, a movie-starstruck (but ashamed of it) mother and two unhappy kids searching for a way to get out of their ruts.

But this is all about Justin, and Justin has two basic problems: how to avoid having to get braces again, and how to get into Rebecca's (Kelli Garner) pants. So….

Justin frequently consults with his dentist-cum-guru, Dr. Perry Lyman(Keanu Reeves) on what to do with his teeth. At first what's done doesn't work, and then Dad…rather Mike [he thinks his kids are too old to call him that] tries something that's embarrassing which then leads to Rebecca dumping him. Then he discovers Ridilin…

Drugs and people's reactions to them are generally interesting pits of plotting, “Trainspotting” being a good example, and what's really strange about this is the fact that the medication works better than all expectations is shown as a bad thing to some extent, his debate coach (Vince Vaughn) frets about having “created a monster.”

The transformation from slacker to overachiever to something else is sort of like a train wreck. Horrible, but you can't take your eyes off it. The acting is generally first rate. Swinton and D'Onofrio have been nominated for Oscars@ and other awards, and no doubt young
Pucci is going to get some too for this thing. Definitely worth a look.

Monday, September 12, 2005

The monday morning batch

PRIDE & PREJUDICE

Directed by
Joe Wright

The better part of a decade ago, I saw a book in the “woman's studies” section about major female writers. Most of those listed were radical feminists from the latter part of the 20th century, but there were a few from before. Many of the entries were several pages long, but one in particular was surprisingly brief. Jane Austin.

Now while this was curious, it wasn't to be unexpected. For the feminists at the time despised the western cannon of literature, and Ms. Austin was one of only a handful of women to have actually made it. Therefore she must be downgraded to a footnote.

But that will never happen. Her work is classic, otherwise her stuff wouldn't still be widely read after two hundred years. It's her, Dickens and Mark Twain, who are the genuine immortals of western literature, not some Marxist theologian pontificating on the objectification of gender. That's why they remake movie adaptations of her novels all the time.

The story of the relationship between Miss Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and the arrogant Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) should be known to pretty much everyone by now. It's not the twists and tangles of the plot which should be surprising, or the sumptuous sets [there are plenty of impoverished gentry out there who'd be willing to rent out their ancient estates], but the quality of the acting and direction.

This is one of the better adaptations. Brenda Blethyn is spot on as the mother and Donald Sutherland is also as the father. These are for the most part silly-yet intelligent people living life as it was in an age very different from today, but human character is ageless, and Austin was very good at capturing that sort of thing on paper. All the jokes still work. A perfect way to waste an afternoon with the girlfriends.

PROOF

Directed by
John Madden

I'm going to make a prediction and you can hold me to it: Gwyneth Paltrow is going to get an Oscar nomination. No ifs ands or buts. She's going to get one, and she deserves it.

David Auburn's play about madness, mathematics and misogyny is a perfect character study. It's about grief and belief, love and hate, sex and drugs. Just about everything.

When we meet Catherine(Paltrow), it's the middle of the night and she's mindlessly channel surfing. Her father Robert (Anthony Hopkins) arrives and they have a conversation about madness and how the mad generally don't question their sanity. Robert, who was famous for being quite mad himself, as well as being one of the great mathematicians of the late century, says that he can question his sanity now because he's no longer mad, just dead.

His top student Hal(Jake Gyllenhaal), now a professor himself, is looking at the old man's papers to find something of genius there. Kate thinks he's trying to steal something and he probably is. But she's a bit of a nutcase herself and irrational, something that comes into clearer focus when her sister Claire(Hope Davis arrives from New York. They're entirely different and don't like each other very much. Clair wants to take Kate back to New York, and get her on medication. Kate isn't that thrilled with the idea or of selling her house back to the University of Chicago.

Finally, Kate let's Hal and Claire in on a secret, a notebook containing a mathematical proof that will revolutionize the science. She claims it for her own, not her father's. Is that the case? Or is she a great mad genius like her dad. In flashbacks we get more insights and brilliant acting. This is riveting stuff. Paltrow gives the performance of a lifetime and everyone else does too.

Attendance is mandatory.

MARY

Written and Directed
by Abel Ferrara

If there was ever a heartfelt plea for censorship and intolerance in recent years, it's this film. It's the revenge of the Orthodox against the heretics. Those who would question Christianity precisely as it has been taught must be punished, and will. That's the message of this sad little film.

Tony Childress(Matthew Modine) casts himself as Jesus Christ in a movie version of some of the gnostic gospels discovered in Egypt in 1945. In it, Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) playing Mary Magdalene, explains secret knowledge given to her by JC, much to the shock and horror of some of the other disciples. Playing Mary has given Marie religion, and rather than return to the 'States, she goes to Israel, where the filmmaker shows constant pictures of dying Palestinians.

Meanwhile, superstar network journalist Ted Younger (Forest Whitaker) is doing a series on “the real Jesus.” We already know about the real Jesus from the Gospels, there's no other way to go. Thus he must be severely punished by God. This happens when Jesus sends Ted's wife (Heather Graham) to the hospital with severe labor complications. When this happens he's interviewing a Jewish theologian who explains why the Jews killed Jesus. At first he likes Tony's film, but turns against it at Jesus' behest.

Ted is made to be an evil monster who demeans God for the sake of mammon. A genuine villain, and the protesters are deemed right. Censorship and intolerance of others views are celebrated and this is genuinely horrid. If you're tempted to see this crock of shit, take a deep breath and rent “Dogma” instead. You have been warned

SORRY, HATERS

Written and Directed
by Jeff Stanzler

“As with many films, the true nature of the characters in “Sorry Haters” may defy your initial expectations. The filmmaker respectfully asks you to avoid revealing these twists as you write about the film.”-The press notes

Actually, my expectations weren't defied at all. I expected this to be a generally anti-American screed. America would be depicted as evil. All Americans would be depicted as evil, no matter whether they were rich or poor, liberal or conservative, black, white, Christian or Jew. That is what I expected, and that's what I got.

There were a few plot twists here and there, but they mostly came early on and most of the film was based on them.

Ashade, the totally innocent Muslim cab driver (Abdellatif Kechiche) is in a bit of trouble, his brother and nephew have been arrested by the evil American Government at Kennedy airport because the elder had sighed a lease witnessed by an alleged terrorist. Both have been sent to Cuba for torture and interrogation.

One night he picks up a woman calling herself Phillie (Robin Wright Penn), who asks him to take her to new Jersey so she could deface her ex's(Josh Hamilton) car. It seems that her kids Manderin teacher(Sandra Oh) has stolen her family and she wants revenge.

On the way back, she discovers Assad's plight, and decides to help. She's a bigshot with the Q-Dog TV network, which she hates because it makes young kids waste money on plastic surgery and bling. The biggest show on the network has the same title of the movie, and it doesn't make any sense there either.

It turns out that Phillie isn't who she says she is, and thinks that terrorism is just what should be done to help Ashade solve his problem. Then the torture begins. This is Evil America, and even the far left are irredeemable.

The haters are not sorry, and they're the one making this film. It's extremely weird, but not worth the money.

NORTH COUNTRY

Directed by
Niki Caro

If you've ever seen the reruns of Dragnet on TV Land, you'll remember the phrase “The story you have just seen is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” This is supposed to be something like that, but it's actually not, for the case which it's based on, Jenson v. Eveleth Mines, is much more interesting and involved than what we see here. It lasted 14 years before the investment firm holding out [the actual mining company caved almost immediately] was forced to settle for $35 million.

No, you can't have fifteen women fighting for their rights for the better part of a generation in an hour and forty minute movie, much better to have one woman, let's say a very good looking almost middle-aged blonde with two kids, better yet, make her a battered wife, coming up to live with her parents and start a new life….

Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) and her two kids(Thomas Curtis and Sage Coy) do indeed move in with her disapproving parents (Sissy Spacek and Richard Jenkins). Her Daddy hates her and thinks she's a slut who deserved to get beaten up. That part's pretty much unnecessary, but this is only the beginning.

Josey hears from her old schoomate Glory (Frances McDormand) that the mine has been forced to hire women by the federal government and Josey and some others(Michelle Monaghan, Jillian Armenante and Rusty Schwimmer), and they're greeted with the opposite of open arms.

Now razzing by and harassment of new workers by the old is a long tradition among miners, especially when work is scarce. But the woman's movement changed the rules, and changing the rules generally brings a harsh reaction. This is a particularly ugly film about ugly people, and this is the cleaned-up version. The way it was fictionalized is that all the plaintiffs complaints were boiled down to be those of one woman, whom everybody portrayed as a whining traitor, that would be Josie,and even her son turns against her.

Things get worse when she meets Bill White (Woody Harrelson), a former high school hockey star and failed attorney, who decides to help Josie set up the first ever sexual harassment class action suit. Then it really hits the fan.

What keeps this from being a glorified movie of the week is the cast. We've got three Oscar winners and a nominee, and everybody else is really good as well, especially the two kids. It's all rather predictable, but it works.

Caché (France)

Written and Directed
by Michael Haneke

This film is one long tease. There might be a solution, and it's hinted at, but Director Haneke makes the possibilities so ambiguous that one can't be sure as exactly who done what. It's really frustrating.

Geroges(Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne( Juliette Binoche) live with their son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) in an expensive neighborhood in Paris. Life is good, with our hero hosting an intellectual TV show while his misses is an editor with a major publisher. You're typical lower-upper class family.

Then they start receiving tapes of the front of the house. They rightly suspect a stalker, but since it's only a person unknown videotaping the house from a public area, the police refuse to investigate. This both ticks them off and starts making them miserable. Who might be doing this? Might it be a deranged fan? A disgruntled author? A jilted lover perhaps?

They try to keep it quiet, but friends Pierre(Daniel Duval) and Mathilde(Nathalie Richard) find out during dinner. Pierrot gets postcards from the person in school. Georges' boss(Bernard Le Coq) gets a videotape too. It's all very disconcerting. The acting is terrific and the one can cut the tension with a knife. So far so good.

The thing begins to go wrong when Haneke decides to posit a possible solution. The stalker sends a tape of Georges' old house. This brings on a visit to his mother, and nightmares of an Algerian boy his parents were planning to adopt but he had underhandedly gotten rid of when he was six. Might the grown-up Majid(Maurice Benichou) be plotting revenge after all these years? Should Georges be held accountable for something he did as a little boy? Should a little boy be held accountable for the Algerian War of the 1950s and '60s? A trip to visit his mother(Annie Giradot) doesn't help anything.

The lead-up to the climax is rather infuriating. Pierre makes a pass at Anne, who is ticked off at her husband for keeping Mejid a secret. Pierrot runs away for a bit. Everybody begins to run raw. Majid and his son proclaim their innocence until the end and beyond. Only the violent climax is jarring. I'm told that this is a typical Michael Haneke film. I'm not going to become a fan.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Batch #2

We've been busy, haven't we?

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (USA)

Written and Directed
by Jason Reitman

Bill Buckley's son Chris wrote a novel satirizing the lobbying biz a few years back, and one would think that Liberal Hollywood would have kept far away as possible from this conservative screed. But no. What we've got here is a valentine to everything that's bad about American government and the joys of political correctness. It works too!

We have to call Nick Naylor(Aaron Eckhart) our protagonist, because we're not sure if he's a hero or a villain. What he does for a living is spokesman for the Tobacco industry, which as we all know, kills millions of people all over the world.

He's a great spokesperson indeed. We see him blowing away advocates for good health and envornment on TV, and laughing at how many people are killed by his pals Polly (Maria Bello) Bobby Jay (David Koechner) the chief lobbyists for Alcohol and Firearms respectively. They know what they're doing and they don't care. Fun, huh?

On the other hand, Nick's trying his best to be a good father. This despite the fact that his ex(Kim Dickens) is living with a doctor. His son Joey(Cameron Bright) idolizes him, and with reason. Dad is brilliant at what he does, and shows him when he taks him along on a trip to LA, where Joey gets to see a super-agent Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe) get product placement on a major science-fiction flick and his dad bribe the retired and bitter(Sam Elliott) get bribed into silence. It's a wonder to behold.

What's most fun is the depiction of the defenders of good health.
Vermont Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy) is made to look like a moron and investigative reporter Heather Holloway(Katie Holmes) a slut. One can tell it was written by a Republican.

The star-studded cast is uniformly brilliant, and this is one swell hoot. See it now.

TIDELAND

Written and Directed
by Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam, one of the great movie directors of the twentieth century, has committed cinematic suicide. He's had trouble with producers and other executives before, many times. Usually, he's managed to create greatness despite all the trouble and expense. This time, he's not only failed, he's created a disaster of biblical proportions. To quote Cameron Crowe's “Elizabethtown:” “ People fail every day, it's the fiascos that people remember.”

Most of the film is unwatchable. When we meet Jeliza-Rose(Jodelle Ferland) and her parents(Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly), Rosie's cooking up some heroin for her father. It's all very homey, with Dad wanting to go to Jutland in Denmark and listen to his daughter read from “Alice in Wonderland” while Mom just wants her feet rubbed and to eat lots of chocolate. She dies in the first five minutes.

Dad and Rose have to hightail it out of town before the cops come. What's interesting is that Jeliza-Rose doesn't care about what's happened to Mom. She's happy now that she can have some candy now. They go to J-Rose's grandmother's house, now long abandoned, somewhere in the far Midwest, where there's no neighbors to be seen and the little girl begins to turn feral.

Dad's dropping dead of an overdose doesn't help matters. But before that happens, she meets the only neighbors with in miles and miles, and both of them are quite insane.

Dell(Janet McTeer) is in early middle age and is an amateur taxidermist who thinks that the bees of the world are out to get her, and her younger brother Dickens(Brendan Fletcher) is mentally “challenged.” He thinks the prairie is the ocean and the trains are killer sharks. J-Rose talks to her bodiless dolls, which might be somewhat normal, but Gilliam makes it downright creepy.

The whole thing is creepy. As the film goes on, this self-described combination of “Psycho and Alice in Wonderland” begins to look more and more like the former. The inferior Gus Van Zandt remake to boot. Gilliam's gifts have deserted him here and the last third of the film is genuinely horrible. Pedophilia and mummification. Yeech!

While it's still possible that “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” might still be made, the negative buzz generated at the Toronto film festival might ruin that chance. That would be a great pity, but the simple fact is: Terry Gilliam has no one to blame but himself this time.

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS

Directed by
Stephen Frears

For a change of pace, Steven Frears, who gave us such gems as “High Fidelity” and “Dirty, Pretty things” now gives us what might be his greatest work of all, a delightful British musical set during the end of the inter-war and early World War II periods.

Laura Henderson's(Judi Dench) husband has just died, and as she's now a widow with too much money, she has to figure out what to do with her life. What she does is buy a theater on Windmill street on the west end of London, which she calls “The Windmill.” As she's an amateur in the impresario biz, she's introduced to a professional one, a Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins) by name, who's had much success in the past. They get on each other's nerves from the start.

But they have faith in each other, and VD has some ideas for a new way of doing business, which is a major success at first, but then goes downhill as every other music hall in London copies it.

Then Mrs. Henderson has an idea, why not have nudie shows. But those are patently illegal. There is a loophole, however, if the naked ladies don't move, then it's considered art, and clothed entertainers can do pretty much what they want. The Lord Chancellor (Christopher Guest) says as much. So Bertie(Will Young) and the Millerettes(Anna Brewster,Camille O'Sullivan, Kelly Reilly et al)

Martin Sherman's script is flawless and the the supporting cast is delightful. Even though it's about nudity, this is most definitely family entertainment. Unless you're a prude and are sure they can't handle the sight of naked breasts, this is an excellent film to take the kiddies to. This is actually the kind of thing that a ten year old girl, if not to say a boy, would enjoy immensely. So would everyone older.

L'ENFER

Directed by
Danis Tanovic

“L'enfer” is French for hell. This is that all right. A very nasty film about very nasty people. It's about stalking and infidelity and needless suffering. No it's not a comedy. What it is, is anything but.

This is about three estranged sisters: Sophie(Emmanuelle Béart), Celine(Karin Viard) and Anne(Marie Gillain). Sophie is married to Pierre(Jacques Gamblin) and has two kids, Anne is having a fling with her archeology professor(Jacques Perrin), while the shy Celine is visiting their crippled mother(Carole Bouquet), to whom she reads excerpts from the Guinness book of world records.

The two gals with the active sex lives are rejected by the men they love, while Celine is stalked, or so we think, by a strange man(Guillaume Canet) who reads her poetry in the local pub then disappears. It's all very sad and mysterious.

These women are all indeed in Hell, and we feel every torment they go through. We wonder what exactly was the cause for this and as things go from bad to worse, we begin to wonder why we are being treated to this grand gonegal, okay, only the opening scene and one near the end are that, but there's plenty of misery going on off-screen as well as on. It might be worth a look.

ELIZABETHTOWN

Written and Directed
by Cameron Crowe

Sometimes discussing a film with colleagues after seeing it isn't that great an idea. You can like something and they might hate it and that can, retroactively diminish the enjoyment of it.

In “Elizabethtown” the sum of the parts are far greater than the whole. We've got some of the best performances of the year and some great direction servicing an at best mediocre script. The cast wrestles that sucker to the ground and if you don't mind the plot-holes, you can have a generally wonderful experience.

Drew Baylor(Orlando Bloom) designs shoes for a major company and when we first meet him, he's just produced a disaster. Everybody in the company knows this and he's going to get his head handed to him by the president of the company(Alec Baldwin).

Baldwin is great. His part isn't that big, but watching him and Bloom interact is a joy. Drew is has just constructed a perfect suicide machine and is about to use it when he gets a phone call from his mother(Susan Sarandon). His father had just died while visiting his relations in Kentucky, and he has to go back east to pick up the body and figure out what to do with the body.

So on the way over there, as the only person in coach, he meets an airline stewardess named Claire(Kirsten Dunst), who is almost too damn perky for her own good. She bends his ear for most of the trip. So far so good.

Once we get there we discover that apparently everyone back in Elizabethtown, KY loved Drew's dad. The relatives arrive by the dozen, and their all quirky from the grandma's generation to the little kids. Understandably, Drew decides to bed down in Louisville.

There's the problems with Drew's Mom and sister Heather(Judy Greer) back home, the picturesque relations in Elizabethtown, the gratuitous wedding party in Louisville and the budding romance with Claire. This is a failed epic, and as was said before, the parts are far greater than the whole. This doesn't mean that it's not worth watching. The parts are both funny and moving, there's just too much of them. The version shown here in Toronto wasn't exactly finished, and if this film comes out at an hour and forty minutes, it should be a work of sheer genius. Unfortunately, this version's over two hours long, can't win 'em all.

REVOLVER

Written and directed
by Guy Ritchie

When Guy Ritchie was first promoting “Snatch” he said that his next film would be a historical epic called “The Siege of Malta”, but alas, he married Madonna and then did a remake of “Swept Away” just for her. This was a creative disaster and many thought he would never recover.

Two years and a couple of kids later, it seems he has with a remake of “The Matrix.” No, scratch that. It's also one of “The Thirteenth Floor,” Cronenberg's “eXistenZ,” and “Vanilla Sky” as well. Part of a philosophical sub-genre of films who's name isn't exactly known yet. But this is definitely Ritchie back in form.

Jake Green(Jason Statham) is a gambler and a thief who's just spend seven years in the pokey, his mission in life is to somehow get even with his nemesis, a certain Mr. Macha (Ray Liotta). He and his cronies manage to get a vast amount of money from the guy via coin tosses, and is about to leave when he meets up with a pair of magical loan sharks named Avi (André Benjamin) and Zach (Vinnie Pastore), who, after saving his life twice, demand all his money or else he'd die of a rare blood disease in only three days.

So begins a complicated chase between Green, Macha, a Korean Drug dealer called Lord John and a never seen Mr. Gold. The question is not just about whether Green save his family and or Macha will get his comeuppance, but will anyone actually achieve enlightenment. This is a very interesting film, and I mean that in a good way. See it.

The Morning batch part one

Since it's September the eleventh, WTC day, I figured that it would be appropriate to start with a film by the cinematic equivelent of Osama bin Laden, Lars Van Trier, who's got two films here this year:

Manderlay (Denmark)

Written and Directed
by Lars von Trier

Fear and hatred of what you don't understand is a common enough story. That's what starts wars on occasion. They make movies about it too, and this is one of them, for you see, Lars Von Trier doesn't understand America and therefore he fears and hates it.

I'm not saying this lightly. Von Trier's hatred of America has shown brightly in his films “Dancer in the Dark” and much more in “Dogville,” shows the USA to be a bleak land inhabited by monsters, and irredeemable mess which should rightly be destroyed. His idea of the country is a cartoon based on the most violent of American movies and biased news reports [you think Fox is bad…hoo!]

The fear and loathing from the “Axis of Envy” drives Von Trier, and this is why his four [including the upcoming 'USA-Land of Opportunities', which comes out next year] latest films obsess on the subject. When he says “I'm not anti-American” He's lying. No doubt about it.

When we last left Grace(Bryce Dallas Howard), her father (Willem Dafoe) and his army of gansters, they'd just left the smoldering remains of the teensy village of Dogville, and were on their way to Denver, Colorado, where Dad was the local godfather. Someone else got the job in the week or so in the meantime, and the gang, Grace in tow, heads for greener pastures, and so they head south, to Alabama, where while stopping for some unknown reason, a black woman bursts forth from a gate and announces that Timothy(Isaach de Bankole), one of the slaves is getting whipped, and could she help.

Now when I first heard of this scene when “Dogville” first came out, I was appalled. How could Van Trier even think that slavery was still going on in the 1930s American south, even with all the injustices that were going on there at the time? Well, he wasn't as dumb as all that, and Grace decides to borrow some of her dad's gangster underlings and “invade” the Manderlay plantation in order to bring democracy and the like…her father thinks better of it but agrees. He predicts that the former slaves will be forced to sign contracts endenturing them for life and they'll be indebted to a company store forever. When this indeed happens, Grace starts a revolution from above.

The owner of the place(Lauren Bacall) is on her deathbed, and informs our heroine of how the plantation works, she's appalled of course and imposes a new regime based on socialist and democratic principles, also she forces the remaining whites
(Jeremy Davies, Chloë Sevigny and some others) to indenture themselves to her until such times until they “learn their lesson.”

The plantation undergoes it's ups and downs, Grace and others make some awful mistakes, and in the end everyone seems better off, or do they? In the penultimate scene, Wilhelm(Danny Glover), the elder negro, explains why slavery was better.

This is clearly an allegory of the War in Iraq, pining for the days of Saddam or maybe even Hitler is what seems to be going on here.

The fact that it's so well done makes it even worse. Evil, evil film.!

Free Zone (Israel)

Written and Directed
by Amos Gitai

Just west of the border with Iraq is the area of Jordan known as the “Free Zone.” This piece of desert is sparcely inhabited and is tax free, hence the name. The special status is thus perfect to sell used cars for use all over the middle east.

Rebecca(Nathalie Portman) has just left her husband and grabs a taxi for the airport. She wants to leave Israel in order to forget the wreck of her marriage, but she gets into the wrong cab, for Hanna(Hanna Laslo), has a mission. To cross from Israel to the Free Zone and get thirty grand from “the American” who's her husband's business partner.

So Hanna offers to take Rebecca with her, why we don't know. First there's a slight amount of trouble at the Israeli/Jordanian border, then they get lost, but this is a good place for some interesting flashback action where we see the two protagonist's back-stories. While the relationship between Rebecca and her husband(Markram Khoury) doesn't ring exactly true, the one between Hanna and her husband Moshe(Uri Klauzner) most certainly does and is quite moving.

Finally getting to where they're going, quite late, in fact, the pair meets up with
Leila(Hiam Abbass), who's supposed to be the American's assistant. She and Hanna argue about the money owed, and finally she agrees to take them to see the American.

What happens next is unexpected and actually quite interesting. This is not a geat film, but an extremely good one and the whole thing is quite moving in parts.

Why Portman is brilliant in everything she does except “Star Wars” isn't exactly a mystery. I blame George Lucas. In the meantime, check this out if it ever gets to America.

The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada (USA)

Directed by
Tommy Lee Jones

Guillermo Arriaga, who penned the screenplays for “Amores Perros” and “24 Grams” is a Mexican who doesn't like the US border patrol. In fact, he thinks the idea that the US has a right to defend it's own borders is offensive, and he wrote a script about it. Then he gave it to Tommy Lee Jones who's starring and directing.

Melquiades Estrada(Julio César Cedillo) is an illegal immigrant who works on a cattle ranch in Southwest Texas. He's made friends with his boss, Pete Perkins(Tommy Lee Jones), a bit of a nutcase who likes to commit adultery with some of the local married ladies, mostly Rachel(Melissa Leo), who 's a waitress at the local bistro.

Into this area come Mike(Barry Pepper) and Lou Ann Norton(January Jones), a young couple who's moving there involuntarily. He's with the border patrol and has to go catch illegal aliens trying to run the border. He's good at his job, and that makes some of his coworkers mad, them being Hispanic and all. We then start going back and forth in time between the time Mike and Lu Ann arrive and the time Malquiades' body is found, and we learn in the meantime that Mike had accidentally done it. After all, he had no choice, Malquiades was shooting at coyotes in his direction. Pete wants justice, but since there's no real evidence to convict or even indict Mike, Sheriff Belmont(Dwight Yoakam) says there's nothing to be done, so he buries the body in a local cemetery and that, it seems is that…but no.

Pete decided to kidnap Mike, tie up Lou Ann, and force Mike to dig the body up and accompany him to Mexico, to the place where Malquiedes asked to be put in the ground.

This is a nasty film. One of the most brutal I've seen this year, and we've had some real buisers. The body is shown in an advanced state of decay, Mike gets bitten by a rattle snake and gets the crap beat out of him, and the whole thing goes overlong on the quest through the exotic western desert.

This, despite the brutality and diversions [two of the most boring sex scenes this year], this is well worth a look. It seems that Mr. Jones knows how to direct himself.

Oliver Twist

Directed by
Roman Polanski

Do we need another version of “Oliver Twist?” This is a question that needs some answering, as according to the good old IMDB, there are at least 27 versions of the Charles Dickens novel, and while that isn't nearly as many as say, “A Christmas Carol” or “Dracula” it's still a bit too much.

Not to say that there's anything particularly WRONG with this version. Far from it. Ronald Harwood's script is actually a rather good adaptation, and its directed by Roman Polanski, for crissakes, Still, this has been done to death and there's nothing remarkably different about it.

Oliver Twist(Barney Clark), the angelic little orphan with all that bad luck, loses the draw and goes to ask for more gruel at the workhouse, and is sold off by that evil beadle Mr. Bumble(Jeremy Swift) to an undertaker(Michael Heath) and his shrewish wife(Gillian Hanna), then runs off to London, where starving and exhausted, is taken under the wing of the Artful Dodger(Harry Eden) and is then employed by that beloved villain, Fagan(Ben Kingsley), who was the stereotypical Jew all the way past the Second World War.

Of course he gets rescued by the kindly Mr. Brownlow(Edward Hardwicke), then gets counter-rescued by Nancy(Leanne Rowe) and the despicable Bill Sykes(Jamie Foreman) and then there's the robbery, murder and all that 19th century sociology that Dickens was famous for. He was paid by the WORD y'know, and the original novel was serialized, sort of like a TV miniseries except that…no, for it's time, the 1840s, it WAS a TV miniseries, and clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, one's arse begins to get antsy about three quarters the way through.

Is it worth taking your kids on a Saturday afternoon? Maybe. Renting the video sometime in the spring so the little darlings can cheat on their book report? Actually, that might work as it's unusually faithful to the original source.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Our second batch

I was at the "Shopgirl" press conference, and found it to be the most unhelpful,especially since many of the journalists were condisering it to be a comedy, which it wasn't. I went because I saw it at a junket screening and thought I should report on some of the official activities therein.

That said, here are some more reviews:

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

Written and Directed by
Timothy and Stephen Quay

For many years, the brothers Quay have been animation's dirty little secret. Their films have been usually nasty brutish and, with the exception of “The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb” short. Here, they have decided to go into the live action feature business, with something that looks rather like their animated work. This is nasty, brutish and long.

The famous operatic diva Malvina (Amira Casar) is about to get married when the evil Dr. Droz (Gottfried John) uses his nasty potions to kidnap her and spirit her away to his castle on the Black Sea. What are his nefarious plans? What does he want to do?

Cut to the castle. An innocent piano tuner named Fernandes(Cesar Sarachu) is sent for to tune some bizarre automita that Droz has created in time for his planned performance of something strange.

This is out there, really out there. The whole thing is opaque, a puppet show, where no one can understand much of anything, which for the Quays is par for the course.

The acting, I guess is good enough for what it's supposed to be for. It's all overwrought and theatrical. The best is Sarachu, who's permitted to be somewhat normal throughout the film, while everybody else, especially Assupta Seerna as Droz's major domo, is as if they're on drugs.

It reminds one of Peter Lynch's “Eraserhead” without the yucks. It's not all that good, but it's the right shade of weird for the midnight movie crowd.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (USA),

Directed by
Ang Lee

Ang Lee has always been a risk taker, When he made “The Ice Storm” a few years back, and before that “Sense and Sensibility,” he broke stereotypes of genre and race and went to places no one expected someone from Taiwan would go.

Here he does it again, but with mixed results.

The year is 1963, and a rancher named Joe Aguirre(Randy Quaid) needs a couple of shepherds willing to break the environmental protection laws and herd the sheep in a National Park. What he gets are
Ennis Del Mar(Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist(Jake Gyllenhaal), two down on their luck cowpokes who really need the money, and are willing to camp out on months on end.

So they do. Summers in Montana are short, and up on Brokeback mountain, it gets real cold even in July and August. Ennis and Jack are forced to break the rules and share a tent. Their true natures break out and we discover that we're in the middle of the first big budget gay western. Love is in the air, but their secret is discovered, and soon, too soon, our loverboys are forced to go their separate ways.

But both men believe themselves straight. Ennis was going to marry Alma(Michelle Williams) before this all started and he does. Jack goes on the rodeo circuit when Joe won't give him another summer up in the wilderness. Years go by. Ennis and Alma reproduce, all seems well despite the poverty of the situation.

Then the inevitable happens, and Alma accidentally observes the happy reunion. Everything goes downhill from there. The film is about being in the closet, and adultery. If you're married and have a gay relationship on the side, is that any less sordid than having a mistress. Jack wants Ennis to leave Alma and the kids, but he just can't do it, and the longer the relationship goes on, the more Alma the kids, and eventually Jack's wife Lureen(Anne Hathaway) suffer.

The thing is too long. We don't really care about the two leads as much as their spouses and children. We want this to end one way or another and have it do that soon. But it doesn't. It goes on and on and on and…

This is a noble experiment, but one which has failed. Too bad. I thought “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a timeless classic and expected more.

TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE UK, Special Presentations North American Premiere

Directed by Mike Johnson
and Tim Burton

Ages ago, it seems, Tim Burton did a wonderful little film called “Beetlejuice” about what goes on in the Afterlife. In this version, the dead go on looking like they did at the moment of their deaths, perfect or squashed, cut into pieces or emaciated by disease.

Here he combines that sensibility with his design sense from his “Nightmare Before Christmas” to produce a stylistic sequel to the latter. A tale from the same universe, so to speak, reminiscent of a new “Star Trek” franchise show.

Victor Van Dorn (voiced by Johnny Depp) is to be married tomorrow. He has never met his bride-to-be Victoria (voiced by Emily Watson), the reasons for the situation remain unlclear, although Victor's parents(Tracey Ullman and Paul Whitehouse) want to enhance their status in the world, while Victoria's(Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley), are impoverished nobility who need the money.

Victor, who has fallen in love with Victoria at first sight, is extremely nervous and keeps flubbing his lines during the rehearsal, and flees into the forest to practice some more and gather his thoughts, and while getting his vows right the first time, he unknowingly marries a ghost, Emily, the Corpse Bride(Helena Bonham-Carter), has been waiting for love her life to come for years, after the bastard who was going to elope with her(Richard E. Grant), bumped her off instead. Like Orpheus, Victor ventures down to the underworld….

This is a very happy place where Danny Elfman's music pervades everything with a jaunty bounce and lilting step. The fans of “Nightmare” will delight in the music and glory in the design. The story isn't as predictable as one might expect for something like this, we know it'll turn out fine in the end, but since getting there is half the fun, we don't care about that.

Take the kids, go yourself. It's a perfect follow-up to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

The first batch of the day

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO Ireland/UK, Masters World Premiere

Written and Directed
by Neil Jordan

Cilia Murphy is headed for greatness. As this is being written, his previous movie, Woes Craven's “Redeye” has just come out and between that and this you've got the polar opposites perfectly portrayed. In “Redeye” he plays the perfect gentleman, who's a bit on the macho side before becoming a deranged violent killer. In this thing he's an effeminate transvestite homosexual, who's got no macho whatsoever. Wow!

We meet Patrick “Kitten” Braden(Cillian Murphy) getting whistled at by a bunch of construction workers while pushing a baby carriage. Delighting in the attention, we discover that this relatively pretty person is really a man, and he begins telling the kid the story of his life.

Now this movie is by Niel Jordan, who did “The Crying Game, ” and “The Butcher Boy” with this thing's co-writer Patrick McCabe. He's been known to do some really bizarre stuff, like that soft-core porn thing with Angela Landsbury and we've come to expect the unexpected. I'm not sure if this is THAT unexpected, but…

We cut back to the late 1950s, when a mysterious woman leaves a baby at the door of a certain Father Bernard(Liam Neeson), who is…you know… this isn't the least bit unexpected. Then with appropriate chapter headings and talking robins [with subtitles, natch] we follow Paddy as he develops into a full blown drag queen in the middle of an extremely catholic Irish town near the border with the North.

Cast out of his home for being what he is and rubbing everyone's face in it, he gets in with a rock band called Billy Hatchet(Gavin Friday) and the Mohawks, and from there, he gets involved with IRA terrorists and hangs out with old friends() before heading off to London to look for his birth mother, where he meets some other interesting people, (Stephen Rea and Brendan Gleeson among others) gets blown up by IRA terrorists and in general has a heck of a time before becoming a truly fulfilled individual.

It's a looooooooooong movie. It drags a bit here and there, but Murphy manages to carry the whole thing on his own shoulders. This is not for everyone, Jordan's stuff never is, but if you're into good acting it's worth a look.

A History of Violence (USA)

Directed by
David Cronenberg

Tom Stall(Viggo Mortensen) seems to have it all. He's married to a beautiful, intelligent wife named Edie(Maria Bello) and two children named Jack(Ashton Holmes) and Sarah(Heidi Hayes) who all live in a sweet little town in Indiana, where Tom owns a small resturaunt and Edie is the public defender. It's all very sweet indeed, but as we saw in the prologue, two villain s (Stephen McHattie and Greg Bryk) are coming from elsewhere to ruin this blissful state of affairs.

Tom's bistro is robbed and Tom manages to kill them both in the choreography David Cronenberg is famous for. This makes him a local hero and momentary TV star, which inspires young Jack to fight back against the bullies that make his life hell. But this momentary fame has it's down side…

Enter crime boss Carl Fogarty(Ed Harris) and some of his soldiers. They enter the place and accuse Tom of being the notorious Philadelphia gangster Joey Cusak who had famously ripped open Fogerty's eye and left a really nasty scar a couple of decades before. He's also told that “Joey's” older brother an underboss named
Richie(William Hurt) wants to see him. Is it a case of mistaken identity? What will the local Sheriff (Peter MacNeill) do about it?

That's the big question. It seems that Tom's quite the martial artist, and this leads the family to the truth. But the question remains, what Edie going to do about it?

For us “Lord of the Rings” fans, Viggo Mortensen is one of the best actors around, and it's really nice to see him in what's going to be his post-“Rings” breakout role. His acting is brilliant. We see the inner turmoil of him and his family, and their reactions to the news of the truth. Bello gives an almost as powerful a performance and Ashton Holmes has quite a future in front of him. John Hurt, who's making a bit of a comeback here, is also good.

When this comes out sometime in either the summer or the fall this is going to be a real hit. This is Cronenburg's best and most nuanced movie in quite a few years.

Capote (USA)

Directed by
Bennett Miller

In November of 1959, two ex-cons hunting for money brutally murdered the Clutter family in Western Kansas. This act of barbarism and its aftermath has had a major impact on the history of literature. Truman Capote's book on the subject is a timeless classic, and revolutionized the writing of history.

Capote was an odd duck with his weird voice and strange manner. When he appeared on TV talk shows during the 1960s through the '80s he was a witty joke, sort of like a short Paul Lynde. An extremely flamboyant homosexual who induced giggles on the small screen, and thus was invited to all the parties that mattered as well as those that didn't. He'd done a lot of silly stuff in the past, good stuff like “Breakfast at Tiffany's” mostly. Then there was “In Cold Blood.” That changed everything.

So how did this talented lightweight manage to change the world of literature so utterly? Dan Futterman, who's best know as the brother on “Judging Amy” has turned the relevant parts of Gerald Clark's book into a tight screenplay, and then gotten a killer cast to do it.

Beginning with a graphic depiction of the actual crime, we cut to Truman Capote(Philip Seymour Hoffman) doing what he was then most famous for, being a recanteur at a fancy party. The next day we see him and his boyfriend (Bruce Greenwood) having breakfast and reading that day's NEW YORK TIMES, which has an article on the crime. He's inspired, and with the support of his editor at the NEW YORKER(Bob Balaban) , he and his childhood friend and research assistant Harper Lee(Catherine Keener) way to Kansas.

With Lee doing most of the undercover work in a town ill-disposed to strangers, especially one as weird as Capote, they begin to piece together who the victims were and how the town reacted. Then they get some luck, as the lead investigator's (Chris Cooper) wife(Amy Ryan) turns out to be a bit of a fan. Suddenly, he's got access, and when the culprits are finally caught he gets to meet them.

Whether or not Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock(Mark Pellegrino) were to some extent the objects of Capote's infatuation is left to the viewer, but we begin to notice his duplicity in his dealing with them from the getgo, and it's this relationship with the two killers that takes up much of the rest of the film. That, writer's block, and as the months turn into years, his frustration and regret that he ever got involved in the first place.

Now the depiction of celebrities in film has always been problematic in films. Parody is easy for some of the more quirky ones. Capote's public persona has always been somewhat cartoony and depicting him in a serious mode could be somewhat difficult. Phillip S. Hoffman manages to do this with a boffo performance, and it's here that the Oscar® race must begin. This is something that has to be seen to be believed. He's worth the price of a ticket all by himself.

That the rest of the film is excellent is just icing on the cake. Going is a no-brainer.


See it.

PARADISE NOW (The Netherlands/Germany/France)

Written and Directed
by Hany Abu-Assad

In the world of War movies, the people are beginning to get it. War is different now. Asymmetrical warfare, or as we usually call it, terrorism, is now the vogue, and we're beginning to get stories from the viewpoint of the bad guys, the terrorists.

Said(Kais Nashef) and Khaled(Ali Suliman) are two auto mechanics working in a garage in Nablus, Palestinian-Occupied Palestine. They're not very good workers. In fact, Khaled has just gotten fired when we first meet them. But they seem nice enough. Said's got an eye for the lovely Suha(Lubna Azabal), who's rich and the daughter of a famous father. It all has the makings of a nice comedy. That is until Jamal(Amer Hlehel) shows up.

Jamal is the representative for the Terrorist high command and informs our to saps that they've been chosen to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv the next day and take a bunch of innocent Jews with them. Our friends, being brainwashed losers, are very exited to give their lives for the cause, especially since their pictures will be on sale all over the Palestinian-occupied territories as martyrs and heroes, and the videos they make just before they strap on their bombs might be more popular than the confessions of peace activists [also known as 'collaberators'] before the PA or the Terrorists murder them on tape.

The mission doesn't go as planned. We don't know whether or not our two protagonists have made up their minds to go again, or what. But we do know the culture of death that the unlamented Yassir Arafat, his cronies and competitors have managed to instill in the Palestinian people since the late president decided on war as a negotiating tactic back in 2000.

We see some hope, but in the end it's all a sad waste. We don't really get much of an inkling of what makes the terrorist mind works, and we can't see how it could stop.

This is the future and it sucks.

Friday, September 09, 2005

The morning document dump

BROOKLYN LOBSTER

Written and Directed
by Kevin Jordan

There's an old saying “write what you know,” and that's what wannabe auteur Kevin Jordan did with his first feature in six years, “Smiling Fish and Goat-on-Fire” [or was it the other way around?] was a labor of love that barely got past the fringes of the film festival circuit, and with a few shorts in the meantime, this is his first real chance at a comeback.

It's Christmastime in Sheepshead Bay, and Michael Giorgio(Daniel Sauli) and his girlfriend Kerry Miller(Heather Burns) have come back from the Left Coast to visit the folks. But all is not well. In a classic bit of foreshadowing, the pipe feeding seawater to the lobsters in his dad Frank's(Danny Aiello) wholesale business has broken, and the whole business may about to go the same way.

The bank which Frank had a major business loan went under, and the FDIC has called it in immediately. Frank hasn't the ready cash to do so, so he's been up to minor subterfuge in order to postpone the inevitable as long as possible.

With the problems with the business, Frank and his wife Maureen (Jane Curtin) have been forced to sell their house and have split, Maureen living with her daughter Lauren(Marisa Ryan) and her husband Justin(Ian Kahn) while Frank lives in his office above the business.

Family, hydrolic and financial problems dog the Giorgio family while Mike and Kerry try to figure out whether to return to New York permanently, and whether or not Mike should marry.

This is one of those little movies in which semi-retired thespians can keep in practice, and while Aiello still gets into a few films every year, it's nice to see that Jane Curtin hasn't fallen the face of the earth. The supporting cast is rather good too, and Jordan's script has the right amount of “quirkiness” to keep the whole thing from becoming a total bore.

SHOPGIRL (USA),

Directed by
Anand Tucker

Maybe it’s the expectations that were wrong. This is Steve Martin we’re talking about, and that means comedy. In recent years, he’s done other things, and we’ve come to expect something decent when he’s not only acting, but writing, but we’ve also expect something funny.

This isn’t. In fact, while there are a few jokes as the beginning and the end, this is as serious as a heart attack. Not good.
Mirabelle(Claire Danes) sells gloves at LA’s Saks Fifth Avenue franchise. While the rest of the store buzzes with customers, she just stands there, then goes home to her cat and her artwork.

She meets Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) at the laundry and there’s an attempt at romantic comedy. It’s not that Danes and Schwartzman don’t have real chemistry, it’s that the thing doesn’t really go anywhere.

Then Ray Porter(Steve Martin) appears out of nowhere. He buys a pair of gloves for a lady friend of his, and it turns out to be Mirabelle. He invites her to dinner. She goes. They start an affair, and she breaks up with Jeremy. We expect sparks to fly, and few do. Very few indeed. This is where Martin and director Tucker enter a humor-free zone.

We’ve been had. This isn’t a comedy at all, but a slice-of-life romance. Jeremy goes on the road with a rock band, but while it has the outline of comedy, there’s no real humor here, either. The characters are opaque. We neither know or like them all that much.

There’s a further attempt at comedy involving Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as an evil co-worker, but this falls flat entirely.

This has been sitting on a shelf for quite a while now, and it’s obvious why. Bummer.

WATER

Written and Directed
by Deepa Mehta

Attacking religion has always been a business fraught with danger.
Deepa Mehta knows this all too well, for not only has she been attacked verbally for this film, she’s been threatened with violence and government reprisal.

What this is about is the shortcomings of traditional Hinduism, and the misogynistic way it goes about things.

Little Chuyia (Sarala) is only nine years old. She was married off at six or seven to someone she had never met before and was taken home by her parents to wait for puberty. She has never actually met her husband since. Sad for him and for her, he dies offstage at the beginning of the film. So, without even knowing marriage, Chuyia has become a widow, and in traditional Hinduism, widows are unclean. So she’s sent to an ashram to live out her life mourning for a stranger.

Once she gets there, she’s welcomed but not with open arms. Girls are considered a burden, and nobody wants them, especially if they’re unclean. The place is run by the fat, vulgar Didi, and the stern Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), who can sometimes be nice, but Chuyia finds a real friend in Kalyani(Lisa Ray), who’s in her early 20s and is supporting everybody else by prostituting herself. It’s either that or beg. Tradition demands it.

Then she meets Narayan(John Abraham), the wealthy son of a Bramhin. He’s a follower of Gandhi and is extremely progressive. He’s gallen for Kalyani and there’s a romance of sorts, but this is India of 1935, and that sort of thing isn’t allowed.

This is India at it’s worst. We’re angry at the men for doing this to the innocent women and the leaders of the ashram for doing this to poor Kalyani and Chuyia. It’s a heartbreaking film, and we can see why the powers that be in India are so angry.