In films as varied as The 40-Year Old Virgin, Rent, and Four Weddings and a Funeral has my faith been restored in filmmaking. With the former, it was in the giddy delight of a great low-down joke done right; in the latter, the sparkling joy to be gleaned when one is successfully fooled into feeling as though they are listening in on the wittiest Group of Friends ever. Well, and I say this in no uncertain, hands-shaky-with-relief, terms: Michael Clayton has restored my belief in the very sizzle of a film that pivots not on bullets or bravado, but on pure bravura technique; something remarkable that transforms the story of one New York City fixer (George Clooney) into a truly thrilling work - the thrills derived therein from the art to be viewed on screen, and the adrenaline to be sampled in your blood stream nearly every minute of the running time.
Tony Gilroy, the writer of the Bourne franchise, amazes. Here is a filmmaker who I was pretty sure could serve up a tasty cocktail of escapism, but when it came to his talents at crafting a crackling drama, I was less certain. After all, how could the tricky plotting of a super-spy (replete with obligatory, every-10-minute showdowns,) translate into a reputable movie, unfettered by popcorn junkies or Michael Bay trailers? The answer it seems, is very well. Gilroy, writing with a simmering, hard-boiled ear, threads Michael Clayton out over 120 minutes worth of shattered nerve endings and splintered timelines (a trick he no doubt picked up from his Matt Damon days). His camera moves with silky subtlely, doubling back on itself at critical plot junctures to give the audience a healthy wrench of surprise. And his narrative instincts create such a vivid world of suited-up, nuerotic corporate dealings that it's as if John Grisham were made flesh...and finally given a Brain and a Heart.
Of course, John Grisham could only ever hope to imagine a story as intriguing as this one - a plot spinning about the monumental, and monumentally important, class-action suit against UNorth, a pesticide company that's knocking off its customers with carcinogenic product. Litigating for the company is Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a brilliant attorney who spontaneously goes nuts (his most rapturous-insane monologue opens the film). To prevent the loss of millions (not to mention a reputation and the thought of more billable hours), Edens firm brings in their resident "janitor" - Clayton - to settle things down, reign in Edens, and prevent the client from bolting. The client itself isn't all that happy with the firm's plan, so their in-house counsel (Tilda Swinton) hires two deeply unsettling thugs to keep tabs on Clayton's operation, all the while ready to press the Big Red Button should she feel out of control (which her character does frequently, a paragon of coiled insecurity). And Clayton himself? Well, he's just a weary, working scrooge whose got a kid (Austin Williams) and a mortage to pay (or sell-off, should he need to fend off his addict-brother's loan sharks).
If, all-in-all, Michael Clayton really does sound like the greatest thing Grisham never wrote, then you have yet to witness one milisecond of Tony Gilroy's spiky, disturbing, entertaining, cynical, and edgily articulate film; heck, even those opening scenes don't do it justice, since the true trick of the director's skills doesn't emerge until much later in the game. But it is a blossoming worth sticking around for and Clooney (together with his admirably classy, seedy, co-stars) will make your viewing experience worth while. He is, remember, everything about Clayton that Clayton despises - gussied up, "fickle", truly charming - and yet the actor is also everything about the film that is great: razor-sharp and unforgettable.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Friday Night Lights: The Complete First Season: A
What if they made a great television drama and nobody watched? What if said drama was bolstered throughout its premiere year by rabid praise and die-hard fans and still nobody watched? What if said drama was renewed, along other lesser-known yet more-beloved shows, for another promising year on the air and still no one appeared to view it? Such is the predicament of Friday Night Lights - the profoud, exquisite expose of small-town life that was spun from Peter Berg's 2004 film of the same name (Berg himself brought the concept to the silver screen and he sticks around to exec-produce, as well as write-direct the pilot). But what, ultimately, is the failing of Lights? By all accounts it struggles to find a hearty, a steady, audience; so how can it be that a program with such a negligible fan base be such a critic-winner? Simple: FNL is brilliant. Period.
The series begins much as the film did. It sets up the standard players (though perhaps in a far more crisp, interesting fashion) and then unrolls the standard plot devices: we've got Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) as struggling QB2 under Jason Street (Scott Porter) - the golden boy of high school football - and their coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), not to mention "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) - the cocky runningback - and Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) - the half-drunk fullback. It's a team primed for victory (and not without a healthy dose of pathos)- but also one destined for collapse. Street incurs a tragic accident and whoosh the cards all fall down. With that loose thread, it all begins to unravel and re-thread; the eventual emerging picture? A story told over a multitude of perspectives, refracted through a dozen different townspeople, over a seaons worth of episodes, about one town with one hope, dying slowly.
Yet in that death, rebirth? The quick-change early episodes launch off from the pilot's obvious mechanisms and briskly build a head of steam. Saracen nervously takes the plate as the new QB1; Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) and Tim manuever around a wounded Street; Coach Taylor manuevers around a wounded constituency (not the least of which includes the resident honcho-car-dealer and the mayor); his family takes slow root in a new town; Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) takes slow root in an old town; Smash takes a fast route to a new world; and we as an audience are taken along for the ride - one filled to bursting point with pin-point honesty, as true and delicate as all real life and as just as hard to resist.
But, of course, (and as I mentioned to start with) people have. Why? It isn't as though the soap-tropes that would seem to thrive here do, quite the opposite. Or that the cast of Texan men and women are strangled by their own "cliches", because they aren't. No, it is none of these. Could it be instead though that FNL, a football drama that wielded a razor-edge of catharsis for the everyday, simply was too much for its viewers? That is a tough idea to swallow, and one I'm inclined to not particularly trust, but what alternatives are there? Becuase I'm certainly not going to stand around believing the people simply will not view such excellence.
Still worried about that "excellence" bit I've gone on about though? Then look no further to the multi-episode arcs on racism, or sexual abuse, or steroid use, or the War in Iraq for confirmation that Lights, among its more theatrical breathen, is a vision of savy logic and character development - as curious as a wandering documentarian (a notion aided by the shaky camera work - a crafy trick) with twice as much perception and cunning intellect. It helps though that the show is gifted with such a team of writers, foremost of whom is Jason Katims and David Hudgins. Also worth mentioning? The series' phenomenal, phenomenal, cast - old and young actors, veterans and newcomers, who create marvelous, aching performances.
Now close your eyes for a minute and imagine what would happen if such perfectly realized creations all lived together in one town. What do you see - because I know what I see: it's an epiphany, a miracle about one small town struggling, hoping, praying, and living for those bright game nights. Its name is Friday Night Lights and there is nothing like it anywhere else on television today. Savor it.
Dirty Sexy Money: B+
The crazy, fascinating family at the center of Dirty Sexy Money is quite the small-scale economy of disfunction: they have bags, and bags, and bags, and bags, and bags of money yet hardly seem to work - together or apart; each member fighting against the other, each fighting against themselves. Such is the compelling, and most prominent feature, of ABC's new Wednesday night soap-opera. But look past the flat summations scattered throughout print ads and reviews - Dirty Sexy Money sends-up its own roots by embracing them, and manages to be way more purely entertaining than that other adult drama of the night (though, to be fair, Bionic Woman doesn't have the bolster of such a sparkling, joyously shallow cast). Concieved in an age of arch reverse irony in a visual arena too often cluttered with high concept, low delivery creations, here is something to be lauded, and failing that, at least enjoyed a whole heck of a lot; a show about a large family of eccentric, ridiculously wealthy people who never once manage to make you want to be them (and they even have yachts!) but also never once make you want to stop watching them.
Created by Craig Wright, a veteran of both Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, his final product gets a rare, and rather astonishing, blessing: it is gifted with some of the salacious wit of the former without losing a bit of the hair-pin plot turns of the former. On a scale of critical respectability, there's a sort of lucky pre-destiny in this match-up between a man who trafficked in both the moral, dramatic, absurdities of death as well as the plain ol' absurdities of a drunken Sally Fields and this great big messy production. The end result? A world where lawyer Nick George (Peter Krause) gets sucked back into the world of the Darlings when his father, their long-time family lawyer, dies mysteriously.
Except, he doesn't actually voluntarily re-enter the orbit of a clan that, in his eyes, destroyed his father - he's sort of bribed by the sort of brilliant Donald Sutherland, as familial patriarch Tripp Darling. The scene in which this occurs is pulled off with nothing less than oodles of sly pinache by both actors facing off at opposite ends of a desk - one armed with a rascally, "naieve", smile of benevolence; the other, two exasperated eyebrows and a polished, high-caliber style. This miniature delight (one of several in the pilot episode) doesn't quite encaptulate all that there is to love about Money (as that would take perhaps several, long, slightly shoddy Lifetime films) but it jolts the viewer, entertains them, intrigues them; and in a world where one is either shocked, awed, stimulated, or cajoled by all manner of reality-sweatshop-medical-drama-comedy-musical-casino-mocku-detective-mentaries, to witness a show that promises only what it can deliver - a heap of campy wit and triumphant performances with just a hint of mystery (for spice) - is a true delight.
What perhaps isn't a delight? That cynical idea that nips about the show - the idea that it may start to repeat itself. Now, one may wonder: how can a show, complete with now less than eight main characters, run out of story? The same way it can provide such pleasure: by constantly throwing new stuff, no matter how implausible, in the way of New York's craziest group of relatives. Still, I have hope. This is a show exec-produced by Greg Berlanti, after all - the man that steered Everwood past all manner of schmaltzy potholes. Let's hope he does the same here. Because I'd hate to see what a boozed up Jill Clayburgh, or a cheating William Baldwin, or a sexy Natalia Zea, or a clueless Samaire Armstrong, or a strung-out Seth Gabel, or a wound-up Glenn Fitzgerald, or - heaven forbid - warm and calculating Donald Sutherland would do if their city-wide party were to get bumpy...er.
Created by Craig Wright, a veteran of both Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, his final product gets a rare, and rather astonishing, blessing: it is gifted with some of the salacious wit of the former without losing a bit of the hair-pin plot turns of the former. On a scale of critical respectability, there's a sort of lucky pre-destiny in this match-up between a man who trafficked in both the moral, dramatic, absurdities of death as well as the plain ol' absurdities of a drunken Sally Fields and this great big messy production. The end result? A world where lawyer Nick George (Peter Krause) gets sucked back into the world of the Darlings when his father, their long-time family lawyer, dies mysteriously.
Except, he doesn't actually voluntarily re-enter the orbit of a clan that, in his eyes, destroyed his father - he's sort of bribed by the sort of brilliant Donald Sutherland, as familial patriarch Tripp Darling. The scene in which this occurs is pulled off with nothing less than oodles of sly pinache by both actors facing off at opposite ends of a desk - one armed with a rascally, "naieve", smile of benevolence; the other, two exasperated eyebrows and a polished, high-caliber style. This miniature delight (one of several in the pilot episode) doesn't quite encaptulate all that there is to love about Money (as that would take perhaps several, long, slightly shoddy Lifetime films) but it jolts the viewer, entertains them, intrigues them; and in a world where one is either shocked, awed, stimulated, or cajoled by all manner of reality-sweatshop-medical-drama-comedy-musical-casino-mocku-detective-mentaries, to witness a show that promises only what it can deliver - a heap of campy wit and triumphant performances with just a hint of mystery (for spice) - is a true delight.
What perhaps isn't a delight? That cynical idea that nips about the show - the idea that it may start to repeat itself. Now, one may wonder: how can a show, complete with now less than eight main characters, run out of story? The same way it can provide such pleasure: by constantly throwing new stuff, no matter how implausible, in the way of New York's craziest group of relatives. Still, I have hope. This is a show exec-produced by Greg Berlanti, after all - the man that steered Everwood past all manner of schmaltzy potholes. Let's hope he does the same here. Because I'd hate to see what a boozed up Jill Clayburgh, or a cheating William Baldwin, or a sexy Natalia Zea, or a clueless Samaire Armstrong, or a strung-out Seth Gabel, or a wound-up Glenn Fitzgerald, or - heaven forbid - warm and calculating Donald Sutherland would do if their city-wide party were to get bumpy...er.
Gossip Girl: B
"You're nobody until you're talked about."
One wonders whether or not Josh Schwartz, that whiz-kid maestro behind the best years of The O.C., realized the inherent irony involved when he - a witty television scribe famous for his one-man magic trick: turning "teenage life" into teenage life - took on the job of adapting a young adult book series concerned with the very last thing those Cally kids would have been: gossip, and lots of it. Yet the end result doesn't have a split personality - there are no Seth Cohens struggling to burst the fabric of cloistered, gritty Upper East Side gossip-queens and rich-kid cricles; if anything Schwartz and co-creator Stephanie Savage (another O.C. alum) give Gossip Girl a breezy irreverence otherwise lacking in the ubiquitous viral ad campaigns - replete with air-brushed faces and an implicit malevolence wrapped around the show's tag-line (with which I started this review). But more wisely, they also give the series premiere (and, a viewer hopes, the subsequent episodes) a fast-pace - all the better with which to deliver their throwaway lines and surprisingly good performances.
The titular "Gossip Girl" (Kristen Bell) serves as both narrator of the show and magnate for all of its many secrets, strained tensions, and storylines past, future, and present. Who cares? More importantly, and all the more courageously given the sheer burden of back-story needing to be expounded on, Ms. Ex-Veronica Mars gives our guide to the cliques and pariahs of Manhattan a delightful snarl; she delivers her observations and updates ("Melanie91 reports that...") with pin-point blase glee - all the better to keep a show not exactly founded on new ideas pumping with hot blood, and viewer interest (and joy, since Bell has managed to find such enjoyable work so quickly after her untimely demise on Mars).
This isn't to suggest that viewer interest won't be kept by the trials of one miss Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) when she returns from a year of mysterious exile (a grand entrance our Girl relishes, obviously). Sure her "struggles" are watchable, and more than once fun (the pilot script, by Schwartz & Savage, has a bite of entitled wit), but far more interesting to me are what will happen to those rocked by the waves she creates by her re-entry: Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), her "BFF", and Co. Already in this first hour there is substantial material, and juice-packed at that: Blair's desparate, wire-thin veneer of vanity and security; the frog-to-princes(or princess) tales of siblings Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen); the back story on Serena's departure.
With such a wad of story though there comes a certain, heavy, commitment in viewing. And though the thought of pursuing such "frivolity" for an entire season can occasionally weigh on a person's soul (you can only take so much of Chuck Bass, trust me) the viewing experience is counter-balanced nicely with cast's alert, lively work and the promise of more carb-lite nothing (and by "nothing" I do mean solid quality t.v.) on Wednesday nights. If this all sounds alittle iffy - the thought of watching more rich kids struggle through their "issues" while listening to but more smarm, sass, and Justin Timberlake-via-soundtrack - while paradoxically being slightly addictive - I'd come back just to here more of Blake Lively's repartee (a clear-eyed alcoholic problem-child on the networks is, after all, so hard to find these days) - I'm sure that our anonymous, eponymous mistress of the blogosphere wouldn't have it any other way..and come around in a few more episodes, and I just might have to agree.
One wonders whether or not Josh Schwartz, that whiz-kid maestro behind the best years of The O.C., realized the inherent irony involved when he - a witty television scribe famous for his one-man magic trick: turning "teenage life" into teenage life - took on the job of adapting a young adult book series concerned with the very last thing those Cally kids would have been: gossip, and lots of it. Yet the end result doesn't have a split personality - there are no Seth Cohens struggling to burst the fabric of cloistered, gritty Upper East Side gossip-queens and rich-kid cricles; if anything Schwartz and co-creator Stephanie Savage (another O.C. alum) give Gossip Girl a breezy irreverence otherwise lacking in the ubiquitous viral ad campaigns - replete with air-brushed faces and an implicit malevolence wrapped around the show's tag-line (with which I started this review). But more wisely, they also give the series premiere (and, a viewer hopes, the subsequent episodes) a fast-pace - all the better with which to deliver their throwaway lines and surprisingly good performances.
The titular "Gossip Girl" (Kristen Bell) serves as both narrator of the show and magnate for all of its many secrets, strained tensions, and storylines past, future, and present. Who cares? More importantly, and all the more courageously given the sheer burden of back-story needing to be expounded on, Ms. Ex-Veronica Mars gives our guide to the cliques and pariahs of Manhattan a delightful snarl; she delivers her observations and updates ("Melanie91 reports that...") with pin-point blase glee - all the better to keep a show not exactly founded on new ideas pumping with hot blood, and viewer interest (and joy, since Bell has managed to find such enjoyable work so quickly after her untimely demise on Mars).
This isn't to suggest that viewer interest won't be kept by the trials of one miss Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) when she returns from a year of mysterious exile (a grand entrance our Girl relishes, obviously). Sure her "struggles" are watchable, and more than once fun (the pilot script, by Schwartz & Savage, has a bite of entitled wit), but far more interesting to me are what will happen to those rocked by the waves she creates by her re-entry: Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), her "BFF", and Co. Already in this first hour there is substantial material, and juice-packed at that: Blair's desparate, wire-thin veneer of vanity and security; the frog-to-princes(or princess) tales of siblings Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen); the back story on Serena's departure.
With such a wad of story though there comes a certain, heavy, commitment in viewing. And though the thought of pursuing such "frivolity" for an entire season can occasionally weigh on a person's soul (you can only take so much of Chuck Bass, trust me) the viewing experience is counter-balanced nicely with cast's alert, lively work and the promise of more carb-lite nothing (and by "nothing" I do mean solid quality t.v.) on Wednesday nights. If this all sounds alittle iffy - the thought of watching more rich kids struggle through their "issues" while listening to but more smarm, sass, and Justin Timberlake-via-soundtrack - while paradoxically being slightly addictive - I'd come back just to here more of Blake Lively's repartee (a clear-eyed alcoholic problem-child on the networks is, after all, so hard to find these days) - I'm sure that our anonymous, eponymous mistress of the blogosphere wouldn't have it any other way..and come around in a few more episodes, and I just might have to agree.
Angel: The Complete First Season: B
Most people travel to Los Angeles in search of fame, fortune, and a really great tan. Angel (David Boreanaz), that tormented vampire-with-a-soul from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, came to L.A. looking for redemption. Ironic considering that the city he seeks sanctuary in isn't exactly a mecca of epiphany? Not in the hands of Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt - two pop impresarios working in (mostly) entertaining, witty form. No, in the hands of these two Buffy alums (the former was its creator, the latter was a staff writer) Angel is a moody, moldy, jocular supernatural noir with our heroic vampire himself moonlighting as stoic detective and Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), Doyle (Glenn Quinn), and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) flitting around as his wise-cracking sidekicks. Sound a little strained, a little too top-heavy with "atmosphere"? The answer is: Angel works...if only by the skin of its barred teeth, err, fangs.
The series begins with Angel alone and doing his Batman thing against every evil in the metro area; needless to say, it takes a toll - both physically (though he is like immortal, duh) and mentally; see, our tall, dark, and brooding protagonist only remains as such as long as he remains attached to the world he is so guiltily saving. How? In steps Doyle, a half-demon who receives visions from those in need. Also comes along Ms. Chase, a wannabe actress from Sunnydale armed with a stinging tongue(her perfectly manicured person only masks a soul of the utmost superficiality...which is part of her charm). Together the three start Angel Investigations (they "help the helpless")...albeit somewhat reluctantly and so the show is born and so it runs as such for the first half a dozen or so episodes (Monster of the Week, every week - rinse, repeat); plus, it runs well - considering the level of slapstick verbal theatrics at work and the enjoyable talents of the actors.
But wait, the season is 22 episodes long and I mentioned only the first six or so; so what happens? Well, to phrase it lightly, the whole premise is all shook up. A new character pops up (coincidentally also from Buffy): Wesley Wyndham Pryce, a former Watcher now cavorting about as a "rogue demon hunter" (aka, a baffoon); speaking bluntly, I didn't much like Wesley's character and by the end of the season I couldn't muster nearly as much affection for him as I could for Cordelia (buoyed by Carpenters delicious performance) or Angel (held down my Boreanaz skilled, if rough, sullen essence). And overall the middle portion of the first season is bogged down in tedium and mediocre writing; but have hope! Just as I felt the promising potential of that first act gave way to the grating chatter of the second (ushered forth by the emotionally poignant "Hero") there came a cool wind - "Sanctuary".
Written by Tim Minear & Joss Whedon (only the second episode Mr. Whedon dained to write for the show in it's entire first iteration, bleh), "Sanctuary" has every good element in Angel - a razor's edge of suspense, high drama, and wit - and amped it up into a snazzy cocktail with bark and bite. In the pantheon of the show's writers and their first season achievements, "Sanctuary" definitely ranks high up, and the little Whedon contributes pushes him to the front of the ranks (barely past David Greenwalt, talented in only a slightly less capacity). To say it was a great episode would be a disservice; it was Angel's greatest episode in those rocky first months.
But from that struggle, eventually and not without the sweat stains to prove it, came a true contender; a lithe fighter capable of quick jabs at the funny bone (in that way it rips through pop culture, wordplay, and the withering retort), the heart (in its earnesty concering Angel's "family"), and the blood (in the way it makes it run cold). Watching through the early hours one may have doubts - I sure did - but preserve on: Angel may just be the type of show to get all hot and bothered about.
The series begins with Angel alone and doing his Batman thing against every evil in the metro area; needless to say, it takes a toll - both physically (though he is like immortal, duh) and mentally; see, our tall, dark, and brooding protagonist only remains as such as long as he remains attached to the world he is so guiltily saving. How? In steps Doyle, a half-demon who receives visions from those in need. Also comes along Ms. Chase, a wannabe actress from Sunnydale armed with a stinging tongue(her perfectly manicured person only masks a soul of the utmost superficiality...which is part of her charm). Together the three start Angel Investigations (they "help the helpless")...albeit somewhat reluctantly and so the show is born and so it runs as such for the first half a dozen or so episodes (Monster of the Week, every week - rinse, repeat); plus, it runs well - considering the level of slapstick verbal theatrics at work and the enjoyable talents of the actors.
But wait, the season is 22 episodes long and I mentioned only the first six or so; so what happens? Well, to phrase it lightly, the whole premise is all shook up. A new character pops up (coincidentally also from Buffy): Wesley Wyndham Pryce, a former Watcher now cavorting about as a "rogue demon hunter" (aka, a baffoon); speaking bluntly, I didn't much like Wesley's character and by the end of the season I couldn't muster nearly as much affection for him as I could for Cordelia (buoyed by Carpenters delicious performance) or Angel (held down my Boreanaz skilled, if rough, sullen essence). And overall the middle portion of the first season is bogged down in tedium and mediocre writing; but have hope! Just as I felt the promising potential of that first act gave way to the grating chatter of the second (ushered forth by the emotionally poignant "Hero") there came a cool wind - "Sanctuary".
Written by Tim Minear & Joss Whedon (only the second episode Mr. Whedon dained to write for the show in it's entire first iteration, bleh), "Sanctuary" has every good element in Angel - a razor's edge of suspense, high drama, and wit - and amped it up into a snazzy cocktail with bark and bite. In the pantheon of the show's writers and their first season achievements, "Sanctuary" definitely ranks high up, and the little Whedon contributes pushes him to the front of the ranks (barely past David Greenwalt, talented in only a slightly less capacity). To say it was a great episode would be a disservice; it was Angel's greatest episode in those rocky first months.
But from that struggle, eventually and not without the sweat stains to prove it, came a true contender; a lithe fighter capable of quick jabs at the funny bone (in that way it rips through pop culture, wordplay, and the withering retort), the heart (in its earnesty concering Angel's "family"), and the blood (in the way it makes it run cold). Watching through the early hours one may have doubts - I sure did - but preserve on: Angel may just be the type of show to get all hot and bothered about.
The Nanny Diaries: C+
The style of writing-directing team Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini seems to adapt to the literary properties they re-work to the screen like a mirror: reflecting that work's strengths - usually in the form of a clever visual aesthetic - and occasionally, also the work's weaknesses. In American Splendor, the rough-cut and enjoyable interpretation of Harvey Pekar's work, the pair turned his ordinary-is-extraordinary philosophy into an extended visual gimmick that worked, due mostly to its long-lasting cleverness. But more than that they took his squalid, earthy aura to heart and produced a movie that, while not great, triumphed and payed tribute with dexterity. In The Nanny Diaries the most obvious thing Berman and Pulcini have taken from Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus' novel is this: that Upper East Side mommies and daddies are bad; the comedic satire contained therein seems almost an after thought - or so the filmmakers apparently thought. Because though watching Scarlett Johansson traips about the city with a small child for 105 minutes certainly seems ripe for the plucking, the script fumbles and the direction falls flat. So much for dodging that sophmore slump in this, their second film.
It isn't all bad though. Laura Linney, hiking about in monstrous heels as Mrs. X, gives a lush performance: vivid, viciously funny with just a roll of the eye, and unnecesarily sympathetic. Because sympathy is quite the last thing needed in the cinematic Manhattan landscape envisioned in this translation - a place where red umbrellas fall from skies and digital recordings meld with the real world. Also too there seem a large supply of wackos and caricatures, something only mildly notable in the book. As it is, the carnival world our heroine - voluntarily hired on a lark as a nanny for a summer of "field observation" (she wants to be an anthropologist with a degree in business, heh) - finds herself in seems all together alittle too synthetic, absurd. Sure one could claim so too was the book, and they would be (mostly) right but Diaries slices out just what could have saved it: atmosphere; while in turn saving just what it needed least: Hollywood.
Let us look at the timeline of the plot, both in the book and film, hmm? In the book, stressed out Nanny (as everyone refers to her, even as she refers to herself) takes the child-rearing gig as part of a job program she's set up for herself to get through college. While engaged as such, she gets lost in a mad-cap world of subtle Sex and the City style soiries, scandals, and sobs late at night with a bottle of wine. But however does she make it through? With a veritable army of acquaintances both work-related and personal (gotta love her grandma and best friend). Oh and she bags a guy; he's sort of flat, a little too earnest, but he's more real than she probably see's all day. And before we forget: Nanny playing "nanny" ends badly. All in all, not a bad little misadventure and pretty funny at times.
Not so much in the movie. In The Nanny Diaries, Superstar A schlubs it as a totally well-intentioned, empowered woman in a world of world-weary "empowered" women as she tries to weave her way through the minefield that is a rather limp imagining; sadly, she doesn't give it much effort (though kudos for having a husky voice), though who could blame her? Her friends have all deserted her - save Lynette (Alicia Keyes); her boyfriend (Chris Evans) now drags heavily on her person with his bright eyes and so waaay too earnest persona; and her grandma - so lovable and caring on the page? Dead, replaced with lined-face "Ma" (Donna Murphy). All in all, I'd have to say taking this chick in this world - now turned gratingly 2-D amidst such obvious targets - over spunky, sensible Nanny would have to be crazy.
It isn't that I demand alot from a chick-flick adapted from chick-lit; I expect a solid translation, a chuckle, and to leave smiling; though I will admit that having heard our venerable, aformentioned Berman and Pulcini would be helming, I came also expecting some sparkle, something nifty. And yeah, I got most of that at times; Johansson has the working-woman-in-the-movies frazzle down, the source material keeps it's outline, and Linney stacks up well with her biggest competetion in recent Diva history, Meryl Streep. And who couldn't help but smiling at the film's end (especially knowing what could have happened)? But what, ultimatel, our we left with as an audience? The answer, in perspective, doesn't really live up to expectations; because for all of the narrative possibilities in the book, we get the easiest one, the cheapest. For all of the chances presented at satire, we are shown the most obvious, the broadest. And for all of subtlety available pre-translation (which wasn't a whole lot, but still) we hear nothing but speechifying. One would have expected more from a bag of acting/directing/writing talent that have proven to be gifted with spark but, yet again, what do we get? Not much folks, not much.
It isn't all bad though. Laura Linney, hiking about in monstrous heels as Mrs. X, gives a lush performance: vivid, viciously funny with just a roll of the eye, and unnecesarily sympathetic. Because sympathy is quite the last thing needed in the cinematic Manhattan landscape envisioned in this translation - a place where red umbrellas fall from skies and digital recordings meld with the real world. Also too there seem a large supply of wackos and caricatures, something only mildly notable in the book. As it is, the carnival world our heroine - voluntarily hired on a lark as a nanny for a summer of "field observation" (she wants to be an anthropologist with a degree in business, heh) - finds herself in seems all together alittle too synthetic, absurd. Sure one could claim so too was the book, and they would be (mostly) right but Diaries slices out just what could have saved it: atmosphere; while in turn saving just what it needed least: Hollywood.
Let us look at the timeline of the plot, both in the book and film, hmm? In the book, stressed out Nanny (as everyone refers to her, even as she refers to herself) takes the child-rearing gig as part of a job program she's set up for herself to get through college. While engaged as such, she gets lost in a mad-cap world of subtle Sex and the City style soiries, scandals, and sobs late at night with a bottle of wine. But however does she make it through? With a veritable army of acquaintances both work-related and personal (gotta love her grandma and best friend). Oh and she bags a guy; he's sort of flat, a little too earnest, but he's more real than she probably see's all day. And before we forget: Nanny playing "nanny" ends badly. All in all, not a bad little misadventure and pretty funny at times.
Not so much in the movie. In The Nanny Diaries, Superstar A schlubs it as a totally well-intentioned, empowered woman in a world of world-weary "empowered" women as she tries to weave her way through the minefield that is a rather limp imagining; sadly, she doesn't give it much effort (though kudos for having a husky voice), though who could blame her? Her friends have all deserted her - save Lynette (Alicia Keyes); her boyfriend (Chris Evans) now drags heavily on her person with his bright eyes and so waaay too earnest persona; and her grandma - so lovable and caring on the page? Dead, replaced with lined-face "Ma" (Donna Murphy). All in all, I'd have to say taking this chick in this world - now turned gratingly 2-D amidst such obvious targets - over spunky, sensible Nanny would have to be crazy.
It isn't that I demand alot from a chick-flick adapted from chick-lit; I expect a solid translation, a chuckle, and to leave smiling; though I will admit that having heard our venerable, aformentioned Berman and Pulcini would be helming, I came also expecting some sparkle, something nifty. And yeah, I got most of that at times; Johansson has the working-woman-in-the-movies frazzle down, the source material keeps it's outline, and Linney stacks up well with her biggest competetion in recent Diva history, Meryl Streep. And who couldn't help but smiling at the film's end (especially knowing what could have happened)? But what, ultimatel, our we left with as an audience? The answer, in perspective, doesn't really live up to expectations; because for all of the narrative possibilities in the book, we get the easiest one, the cheapest. For all of the chances presented at satire, we are shown the most obvious, the broadest. And for all of subtlety available pre-translation (which wasn't a whole lot, but still) we hear nothing but speechifying. One would have expected more from a bag of acting/directing/writing talent that have proven to be gifted with spark but, yet again, what do we get? Not much folks, not much.
Borat: A-
Intolerance is defined by Random House's Unabridged Dictionary as "unwillingness or refusal to tolerate or respect contrary opinions or beliefs, persons of different races or backgrounds, etc." yet in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan not only is that word redefined to encompass a whole new generation of the American People - it's also turned into the funniest punchline of the year. Masquerading as lanky, mustached Kazakhstan reporter Borat Sagdiyev, writer-actor Sacha Baron Cohen creates a manic-delirious social experiment; a hidden-camera gotcha! that is so uber-sly in its topicality that it reaches a magnificent level of comedy: the kind that stabs your funny bone, your heart, and your mind. If only Adam Sandler should be so lucky.
The loose narrative encompasses both Borat's attempts to glean something productive from our country (with which to help raise up his own) as well as his personal quest to "bag" Pamela Anderson (he falls in love after one surprise viewing of Baywatch - one of many priceless moments). Along the way he is accompanied by his "producer" Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian) and for much of the film they haplessly bicker back in forth in some mangled Eurasian dialect, a moment made shockingly funny by the situations about which they are bickering...and the people around who they fight. Take for example a brief foray into Atlanta as the pair get lost and end up on MLK Dr. - the "ghetto"; or a brilliant encounter with some bed bugs at a Bed & Breakfast; or the now infamous naked wrestling - a bit of physical absurdity delivered with unbridled glee for the rudely raunchy as well as the riotous. Together the two comprise perhaps a barely flickering bulb, but they have great energy and comedic timing to die for - which you will after you see their act.
Because an act is surely what it is. Now I know that most of Borat is filmed unbeknownst to the participants but the style of madman-star Cohen winks just as knowingly at the sheer fact of the films inane encounters and coincidences, and there in lies the genius. The best example of this occurs when Borat takes center-stage to sing the National Anthem at a rodeo in the Deep South. Before doing so - and after one very bizzarre, very troubling, horribly earnest, and deadly funny conversation with the rodeo manager - he prattles on about his support of America's "war of terror" and how our beloved President should drink the blood of every man, woman, and child. Surprisingly enough, these two remarks win copious applause which only cements the sociopolitical implications of the film: that we're far more ignorant, stubbornly prejudicial, than we would have ourselves believe. The beauty of Borat? It dissects, skewers, and satirizes these downfalls with unparalelled grace.
Yet grace is sorely lacking in the fumblings of Borat himself. Blinkered and dumb, he struggles through the culture and the language, revealing almost as he passes others' stupidity. Yet the pure, zesty garrishness of his exploits serve as weighty counter-point to the jagged sword turned on our very present sense of "tolerance" - and its diminishing capacity. So now that you've read this far, you must be wondering: what is Borat: Very Funny Movie or Grandly Enlightening Documentary? At times as a viewer I wavered between the two, struggling for an answer, but it turns out the final joke is on all of us, the audience; turns out Borat is both.
The loose narrative encompasses both Borat's attempts to glean something productive from our country (with which to help raise up his own) as well as his personal quest to "bag" Pamela Anderson (he falls in love after one surprise viewing of Baywatch - one of many priceless moments). Along the way he is accompanied by his "producer" Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian) and for much of the film they haplessly bicker back in forth in some mangled Eurasian dialect, a moment made shockingly funny by the situations about which they are bickering...and the people around who they fight. Take for example a brief foray into Atlanta as the pair get lost and end up on MLK Dr. - the "ghetto"; or a brilliant encounter with some bed bugs at a Bed & Breakfast; or the now infamous naked wrestling - a bit of physical absurdity delivered with unbridled glee for the rudely raunchy as well as the riotous. Together the two comprise perhaps a barely flickering bulb, but they have great energy and comedic timing to die for - which you will after you see their act.
Because an act is surely what it is. Now I know that most of Borat is filmed unbeknownst to the participants but the style of madman-star Cohen winks just as knowingly at the sheer fact of the films inane encounters and coincidences, and there in lies the genius. The best example of this occurs when Borat takes center-stage to sing the National Anthem at a rodeo in the Deep South. Before doing so - and after one very bizzarre, very troubling, horribly earnest, and deadly funny conversation with the rodeo manager - he prattles on about his support of America's "war of terror" and how our beloved President should drink the blood of every man, woman, and child. Surprisingly enough, these two remarks win copious applause which only cements the sociopolitical implications of the film: that we're far more ignorant, stubbornly prejudicial, than we would have ourselves believe. The beauty of Borat? It dissects, skewers, and satirizes these downfalls with unparalelled grace.
Yet grace is sorely lacking in the fumblings of Borat himself. Blinkered and dumb, he struggles through the culture and the language, revealing almost as he passes others' stupidity. Yet the pure, zesty garrishness of his exploits serve as weighty counter-point to the jagged sword turned on our very present sense of "tolerance" - and its diminishing capacity. So now that you've read this far, you must be wondering: what is Borat: Very Funny Movie or Grandly Enlightening Documentary? At times as a viewer I wavered between the two, struggling for an answer, but it turns out the final joke is on all of us, the audience; turns out Borat is both.
The Talented Mr. Ripley: A-
Meet Tom Ripley (Matt Damon). He's handsome, smiles alot, has a great laugh, and is charming as hell. He enjoys Italian vistas and the company of other men (both fraternally...and, well, not). He's got a great ear for music (he professes to a jazz addiction) and an eye for decoration (though once, famously, one of his room designs ended in a bit of a fiasco). Plus, his social mannerisms are to die for!
Who wouldn't love to meet/befriend/lust after the looking-for-love Mr. Ripley I've just described above? Anyone missing their brain and a pair of peepers, that's who - or so says writer-director Anthony Minghella in his classically sun-dappled The Talented Mr. Ripley. The rich subtext to his answer also provides his film with its subversive charge: that in wanting to know the shiny, all surfaces "man" above, you fall directly into that man's trap; that in falling for a nobody with a gleaming smile and a twinkle in his dimples, you make him a somebody. Such is polished, sly thesis of Minghella's film: that deception, lying, and identity are all intrinsically linked into how you use the first two to perverse how peopele connect you with the latter.
But I jump ahead of myself. The tale of Tom Ripley, New York University piano tuner and all-around good guy, has been famous for more than 50 years since Patricia Highsmith, that cooly amoral creator of amoral men, first published the first of five Ripley novels (collectively known as "Ripliad"). What makes this latest adaptation of Ms. Highsmith's literary work such a fascinating one - certainly a picture with which one can take lessons in genial banter and split-second timing - is that the famed English Patient auteur strips away most of the early malice from the source material and builds from the ground up; crafting an origin story with a heady sense of knowing irony (the joke being that Mr. Ripley's origins are the very seeds of his murderous adventures: to find one). This may be that rare film whose curiousity is a doomed trait - since to discover the answer is to banish the demon - yet is played off with such well-structured effectiveness that such a weakness is lost in the shining light of Jude Law's bronzed skin or the glimmering Meditterranean.
The Talented Mr. Ripley begins with our as yet not quite evil hero tickling his ivory keys for a bunch o' rich folk. Two of these folk are the parents of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), a playboy heir lost to the "depravity" of Southern Europe. Dickie's parents would love to see him brought home but have yet to find a willing emissary. Enter our piano player, decked out in a borrowed Princeton jacket, and soon the worried parents have assumed several things at once - that Tom knew their son at school, that Tom is a perfectly responsible young lad - and sent Mr. Ripley off to Italy to recover the errant young jazz-fancier. Skip ahead and Tom has insinuated himself into the rich Park Avenue-transplants that Dickie surrounds himself with. Among these are Marge (Gwenyth Paltrow), Dickie's girlfriend (though he cheats mercilessly), Meredith (Cate Blanchett), a rather startlingly pleasing young textile heiress, and Freddie Miles (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). All together these wealthy guardians of society have quite the time together - with Ripley included - but events are stirring in the horizon to capsize their decadent, metaphorical, boat of sin and glamor.
If I sound abstract, it's intentional - because the split-second, teetering dominoes-effect catastrophes that occur are best left to one's imagination and sudden revelation. Anthony Minghella spins a taunt, paradoxically revolting and ravishing story from plain old class-envy but his more admirable accomplishments are in the details (since that is where the devil, our Tom, resides). The script charges the air between Dickie and Tom with eroticism and mis-begotten lust while skewering the pockets between this class intruder and everyone else with suspicion and jealousy (Hoffman's beady eyes are twin jewels of disgust and barely contained, barely understood one would think, hate). With such hardly mentioned, healthily registered contempt between him and the world he so desires, why wouldn't Mr. Tom Ripley end up the way he is: "trapped in the basement" of his own demons, locked, without a key. As films go, Minghella parlays such an obvious idea (pander to audience sympathies) into a movie where we despise the serial-killing, identity-theiving protagonist every moment until we don't; where Matt Damon's enlivened performance turns a remorseless psychopath into a fallen angel of sorts.
Ultimately the clever, entrapping machinations of The Talented Mr. Ripley are enough to keep the audience hooked. And the cast's work is like icing on the cake. Law and Paltrow, as two naieve brats playing house, plaster on their characters' necessary emotional hollowness until their very existence seems futile - a fact the director exploits with subtle skill. Blanchett turns in flawless work, her note-for-note debutante made into a perfectly realized creation. And Damon, his face working overtime to get at what makes Mr. Ripley tick, reaches an applause-worthy high (even if he, no thanks to an occasionally too shallow conception, can't quite express the driving vanity of his character's bloody escapades). Brought together then strung apart over continents and 138 minutes, these waifish personalities serve as fodder and tender (and sadly, even once or twice as love interest) to the burning-bright flame of Anthony Minghella's fascinating subject; a fire stoked and managed with cutting undercurrents of sexuality and empathy that makes it all the more searing and memorable.
Who wouldn't love to meet/befriend/lust after the looking-for-love Mr. Ripley I've just described above? Anyone missing their brain and a pair of peepers, that's who - or so says writer-director Anthony Minghella in his classically sun-dappled The Talented Mr. Ripley. The rich subtext to his answer also provides his film with its subversive charge: that in wanting to know the shiny, all surfaces "man" above, you fall directly into that man's trap; that in falling for a nobody with a gleaming smile and a twinkle in his dimples, you make him a somebody. Such is polished, sly thesis of Minghella's film: that deception, lying, and identity are all intrinsically linked into how you use the first two to perverse how peopele connect you with the latter.
But I jump ahead of myself. The tale of Tom Ripley, New York University piano tuner and all-around good guy, has been famous for more than 50 years since Patricia Highsmith, that cooly amoral creator of amoral men, first published the first of five Ripley novels (collectively known as "Ripliad"). What makes this latest adaptation of Ms. Highsmith's literary work such a fascinating one - certainly a picture with which one can take lessons in genial banter and split-second timing - is that the famed English Patient auteur strips away most of the early malice from the source material and builds from the ground up; crafting an origin story with a heady sense of knowing irony (the joke being that Mr. Ripley's origins are the very seeds of his murderous adventures: to find one). This may be that rare film whose curiousity is a doomed trait - since to discover the answer is to banish the demon - yet is played off with such well-structured effectiveness that such a weakness is lost in the shining light of Jude Law's bronzed skin or the glimmering Meditterranean.
The Talented Mr. Ripley begins with our as yet not quite evil hero tickling his ivory keys for a bunch o' rich folk. Two of these folk are the parents of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), a playboy heir lost to the "depravity" of Southern Europe. Dickie's parents would love to see him brought home but have yet to find a willing emissary. Enter our piano player, decked out in a borrowed Princeton jacket, and soon the worried parents have assumed several things at once - that Tom knew their son at school, that Tom is a perfectly responsible young lad - and sent Mr. Ripley off to Italy to recover the errant young jazz-fancier. Skip ahead and Tom has insinuated himself into the rich Park Avenue-transplants that Dickie surrounds himself with. Among these are Marge (Gwenyth Paltrow), Dickie's girlfriend (though he cheats mercilessly), Meredith (Cate Blanchett), a rather startlingly pleasing young textile heiress, and Freddie Miles (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). All together these wealthy guardians of society have quite the time together - with Ripley included - but events are stirring in the horizon to capsize their decadent, metaphorical, boat of sin and glamor.
If I sound abstract, it's intentional - because the split-second, teetering dominoes-effect catastrophes that occur are best left to one's imagination and sudden revelation. Anthony Minghella spins a taunt, paradoxically revolting and ravishing story from plain old class-envy but his more admirable accomplishments are in the details (since that is where the devil, our Tom, resides). The script charges the air between Dickie and Tom with eroticism and mis-begotten lust while skewering the pockets between this class intruder and everyone else with suspicion and jealousy (Hoffman's beady eyes are twin jewels of disgust and barely contained, barely understood one would think, hate). With such hardly mentioned, healthily registered contempt between him and the world he so desires, why wouldn't Mr. Tom Ripley end up the way he is: "trapped in the basement" of his own demons, locked, without a key. As films go, Minghella parlays such an obvious idea (pander to audience sympathies) into a movie where we despise the serial-killing, identity-theiving protagonist every moment until we don't; where Matt Damon's enlivened performance turns a remorseless psychopath into a fallen angel of sorts.
Ultimately the clever, entrapping machinations of The Talented Mr. Ripley are enough to keep the audience hooked. And the cast's work is like icing on the cake. Law and Paltrow, as two naieve brats playing house, plaster on their characters' necessary emotional hollowness until their very existence seems futile - a fact the director exploits with subtle skill. Blanchett turns in flawless work, her note-for-note debutante made into a perfectly realized creation. And Damon, his face working overtime to get at what makes Mr. Ripley tick, reaches an applause-worthy high (even if he, no thanks to an occasionally too shallow conception, can't quite express the driving vanity of his character's bloody escapades). Brought together then strung apart over continents and 138 minutes, these waifish personalities serve as fodder and tender (and sadly, even once or twice as love interest) to the burning-bright flame of Anthony Minghella's fascinating subject; a fire stoked and managed with cutting undercurrents of sexuality and empathy that makes it all the more searing and memorable.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Bourne Ultimatum: A
Of cinematic genres there is much debate: which produces more quality films? which is home to the most money? which spawns the most acting careers? And of answers there are plenty as well - almost more than there are questions. Yet one of the broadest genres of film is also the most definitive; the one that critics dare not question; the form of filmmaking that lies as fundamental to all others: the thriller. Since our most prominent visual form these days is filled with more explosions and sassy black men than it is nail-biting suspense, it would seem a strange statement. But look closer and one would find that every sequence of uncertainty, or every knock on a door at midnight, or even that horrific phone call in Scream is derived from the art form pioneered by Hitchcock with Strangers on a Train; the one were we as an audience experience filmmaking first hand, in a rush, and are dazzled by the experience of not knowing and waiting to find out.
Well, let me just say, that though the thriller may change shape through the decades, it is far from dead. And furthermore, it has perhaps experienced its crowning achievement (or at the very least, one heck of a poster boy) in Paul Greengrass' pumped-up The Bourne Ultimatum; a film where amnesiac super-spy, -assassin, and just general -badass Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) finds closure in a cinematic marvel. Not only does Ultimatum leap over the bounds of a conventional thriller, it nearly renders them obsolete. Consider: in a "normal" thriller the protagonist almost always is rendered "defective" by some unknown event (e.g.: Paycheck) that he and/or she must then go spend 90 minutes kicking butt in order to discover. Once that secret is exposed, the explanation hardly ever make sense (again, like Paycheck). But here, with Greengrass' camera carving up the scenery and the action into a million jagged pixels of pumping narrative and cold fear, the hero works in service of the story (and the screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, works in service of it, serving up a miraculously coherent adventure). Such then it is that these 111 minutes race by, so eager are we to discover the grand final denouement - those relaxing final seconds where we finally catch our breathes.
Because catching one's precious oxygen during the running time is nearly impossible. Leaving out the Major Plot Points (though, obviously, Bourne does "come home" - whatever that means), the travails and tribulations of America's new super-amazing-killer-with-a-conscience aren't something to shake a stick at. He races over the lands of no fewer than four countries and three major continents; engages in life-or-death struggles with no fewer than half a dozen armed men (and at different times & locations too!); and holds no fewer than five terse phone conversations. Our hero has, needless to point out, his work cut out for him.
But don't think he's not up to the task. Matching perfectly the rushing pace of his quest for identity is Matt Damon's steely performance (though, it must be said, his acting lacks in speech what it makes up for in moves); and the admirable cast around him doesn't deserve overlooking either - particularly David Strathairn's amoral CIA super-agent. But lest I forget the final, and biggest, gold star (or cookie, or Oscar, or whatever) goes to franchise director Paul Greengrass. Not only has he put on screen a hallmark of the action-thriller genre but he, with his characteristically jittery camera in hand, has managed to re-work the modern American movie landscape, weaving in true characters to care about and dazed flashbacks to remember. Doubtless anyone will realize it though, seeing as it's so difficult to take your eyes away from the pulsing, dazzling, Breach-shot-through-with-adrenaline work of art that is The Bourne Ultimatum. I know I wasn't able to.
Well, let me just say, that though the thriller may change shape through the decades, it is far from dead. And furthermore, it has perhaps experienced its crowning achievement (or at the very least, one heck of a poster boy) in Paul Greengrass' pumped-up The Bourne Ultimatum; a film where amnesiac super-spy, -assassin, and just general -badass Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) finds closure in a cinematic marvel. Not only does Ultimatum leap over the bounds of a conventional thriller, it nearly renders them obsolete. Consider: in a "normal" thriller the protagonist almost always is rendered "defective" by some unknown event (e.g.: Paycheck) that he and/or she must then go spend 90 minutes kicking butt in order to discover. Once that secret is exposed, the explanation hardly ever make sense (again, like Paycheck). But here, with Greengrass' camera carving up the scenery and the action into a million jagged pixels of pumping narrative and cold fear, the hero works in service of the story (and the screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, works in service of it, serving up a miraculously coherent adventure). Such then it is that these 111 minutes race by, so eager are we to discover the grand final denouement - those relaxing final seconds where we finally catch our breathes.
Because catching one's precious oxygen during the running time is nearly impossible. Leaving out the Major Plot Points (though, obviously, Bourne does "come home" - whatever that means), the travails and tribulations of America's new super-amazing-killer-with-a-conscience aren't something to shake a stick at. He races over the lands of no fewer than four countries and three major continents; engages in life-or-death struggles with no fewer than half a dozen armed men (and at different times & locations too!); and holds no fewer than five terse phone conversations. Our hero has, needless to point out, his work cut out for him.
But don't think he's not up to the task. Matching perfectly the rushing pace of his quest for identity is Matt Damon's steely performance (though, it must be said, his acting lacks in speech what it makes up for in moves); and the admirable cast around him doesn't deserve overlooking either - particularly David Strathairn's amoral CIA super-agent. But lest I forget the final, and biggest, gold star (or cookie, or Oscar, or whatever) goes to franchise director Paul Greengrass. Not only has he put on screen a hallmark of the action-thriller genre but he, with his characteristically jittery camera in hand, has managed to re-work the modern American movie landscape, weaving in true characters to care about and dazed flashbacks to remember. Doubtless anyone will realize it though, seeing as it's so difficult to take your eyes away from the pulsing, dazzling, Breach-shot-through-with-adrenaline work of art that is The Bourne Ultimatum. I know I wasn't able to.
Friday, August 10, 2007
A Simple Plan: A
We have all, in times of desparation or boredom or lack of anything to watch on television, entertained the thought of winning the lottery. "What would we buy?" we ask ourselves and each other, turning the illusion of money into a cathartic session of day-dreaming. And yet imagine if on one quiet snowy afternoon, three people stumbled across the quintissential lottery: 4$ million dollars in a snow-covered plane (complete with rotting dead body and vicious pack of crows). Can you dream up the troubles a group of people would face when in possession of riches? The sterling, white-knuckle tense answer is: neither can they. A Simple Plan, directed by Sam Raimi and written by Scott Smith (who wrote the book on which it is based), views its four central characters - Hank (Bill Paxton), Jacob (Billy Bob Thorton), Sarah (Bridget Fonda), and Lou (Brent Briscoe) - through a prism of morally complex curiousity; in effect, the sickening pull of the film is watch and wonder at just how far, and how far down, these men (and their wives, as in the case of Hank's spouse, Sarah) are willing to go to protect their money. Instead of the usual cat versus mouse (where we as an audience are pre-programmed to jack into the psyches of a predetermined "good guy") we get the far more uncertain (and in that uncertainty, bold energy and skill) premise of man versus morality; the age-old question of at which point does the buck stop?
To Lou, it doesn't. Showing up not days after having secured the money with Hank - since they've all agreed to wait it out 'till Spring before dividing up the cash - he wastes no time in revealing himself to Hank (his grand revelation has something to do with a more macabre aspect of their scheme and much more with Hank's guilt-complex), to which Hank responds with a devious plan of his own...all leading to one of many spasmic, anxious, bouts of violence, perfectly contained in the gothic-chamber vision of a quiet Northern town. The scenes surrounding the Lou against Hank scenario, just the first of many unanticipated turns, are great when viewed first-hand, for the first time, but become near genius in retrospect. See, the cinematic thrust of A Simple Plan - the thing that renders watching and siding with these "criminals" such compulsive, shivering delight - is in the way Smith's script trains our eyes on the small details of relationships and then lets us watch those same tweaks and hair-pin fractures erupt and explode. Billy Bob Thorton's performance is the perfect example. His character, Jacob, begins as the naieve counter-part to Hank. But as the film goes on, bodies, blood, and rationalizations piling up, he morphs before our very eyes. Part of this is due to Thorton's grand, unasuming performance but the greater portion of credit goes to the way the film sets up his relationships with women, his brother, and his friends so as to ensnare us in a web of lies, deceit, and blood as complex as his is.
As crime thrillers go, Plan may have a dated premise darting around its edges but the steely, surreal, elegant manner in which it is brought off eleminates all doubt that this isn't one heck of an original invention. But who would have expected any less from novelist-turned-screenwriter Smith? His two books, this film's source material and The Ruins, are famous for their lacerating psychological clarity and dark anti-climaxes, both of which A Simple Plan has in spades. The most deviously shocking moment of mental relapse occurs early on when Sarah, first realizing the money that has quite literally dropped into her lap, throws her high-horse moral posturing to the dogs with a split-second laugh of the coldest, most piercing, most intense insanity. Pretty soon after that she's become yet another piece of the puzzle; another scheming, ambitious piece. The puzzle they all eventually form is right up there with the most bleak of Smith's (and probably Raimi's) work; suffice to say the Oscar nod he got for the work he put out in adapting his own work was quiet well deserved.
So too was the nod for Billy Bob Thorton, and even more deserved (but even less espoused) were kudos for the raw, stylistically violent, clockwork cool direction from Sam Raimi. Now famous as the schlocky writer-director of the mega-huge-ultimate Spider-Man franchise, he once enjoyed the spotlight as creator of the Evil Dead films. Somewhere in between there though - from indie to infamous - he ascended ever so briefly as a very mature, very talented filmmaker. The cast around him, and the film around them, blossoms in response, flowering into a treat for cinephiles and bibliophiles (for who among the literary crowd won't bodily respond to the verbal skill at work here, from characterization to dialogue exchanges, in a typically visually-saturated form?) alike; a taunt, lean master class in the art of spellbinding and suprising your audience...or in a word, thrilling them.
To Lou, it doesn't. Showing up not days after having secured the money with Hank - since they've all agreed to wait it out 'till Spring before dividing up the cash - he wastes no time in revealing himself to Hank (his grand revelation has something to do with a more macabre aspect of their scheme and much more with Hank's guilt-complex), to which Hank responds with a devious plan of his own...all leading to one of many spasmic, anxious, bouts of violence, perfectly contained in the gothic-chamber vision of a quiet Northern town. The scenes surrounding the Lou against Hank scenario, just the first of many unanticipated turns, are great when viewed first-hand, for the first time, but become near genius in retrospect. See, the cinematic thrust of A Simple Plan - the thing that renders watching and siding with these "criminals" such compulsive, shivering delight - is in the way Smith's script trains our eyes on the small details of relationships and then lets us watch those same tweaks and hair-pin fractures erupt and explode. Billy Bob Thorton's performance is the perfect example. His character, Jacob, begins as the naieve counter-part to Hank. But as the film goes on, bodies, blood, and rationalizations piling up, he morphs before our very eyes. Part of this is due to Thorton's grand, unasuming performance but the greater portion of credit goes to the way the film sets up his relationships with women, his brother, and his friends so as to ensnare us in a web of lies, deceit, and blood as complex as his is.
As crime thrillers go, Plan may have a dated premise darting around its edges but the steely, surreal, elegant manner in which it is brought off eleminates all doubt that this isn't one heck of an original invention. But who would have expected any less from novelist-turned-screenwriter Smith? His two books, this film's source material and The Ruins, are famous for their lacerating psychological clarity and dark anti-climaxes, both of which A Simple Plan has in spades. The most deviously shocking moment of mental relapse occurs early on when Sarah, first realizing the money that has quite literally dropped into her lap, throws her high-horse moral posturing to the dogs with a split-second laugh of the coldest, most piercing, most intense insanity. Pretty soon after that she's become yet another piece of the puzzle; another scheming, ambitious piece. The puzzle they all eventually form is right up there with the most bleak of Smith's (and probably Raimi's) work; suffice to say the Oscar nod he got for the work he put out in adapting his own work was quiet well deserved.
So too was the nod for Billy Bob Thorton, and even more deserved (but even less espoused) were kudos for the raw, stylistically violent, clockwork cool direction from Sam Raimi. Now famous as the schlocky writer-director of the mega-huge-ultimate Spider-Man franchise, he once enjoyed the spotlight as creator of the Evil Dead films. Somewhere in between there though - from indie to infamous - he ascended ever so briefly as a very mature, very talented filmmaker. The cast around him, and the film around them, blossoms in response, flowering into a treat for cinephiles and bibliophiles (for who among the literary crowd won't bodily respond to the verbal skill at work here, from characterization to dialogue exchanges, in a typically visually-saturated form?) alike; a taunt, lean master class in the art of spellbinding and suprising your audience...or in a word, thrilling them.
Wicked: B+
What drove the Wicked Witch of the West? What motivated her to wear those horrendous black skirts? Why did she train a legion of animal followers to do her bidding? Why was she the sole green woman in a land of midgets? And why was she so deathly allergic to water? These are some of the central questions kicked around by author Gregory Maguire in his grandly allegorical, philisophically murky Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. In Wicked the future "fiend" is born as Elphaba in a quiet town located squarely in the province of Munchkinland to a zealot father and a morally unscrupulous mother. She is green and her features are sharp, angular, and as fearsome as a pair of scissors. Oddly enough her birth almost exactly coincides with the ascendence of the Glorious Wizard down into the Emerald City - the capital of Oz, her home.
And if this sounds all alittle quiet, rote even, things get pumping in quick fashion. It turns out the Wizard isn't a kindly, bumbling, old man (a la the '39 movie version); instead he is a politically wily despot who, flying down from the sky on his famous red hot-air balloon, quickly stirs up a coup and takes the reigns from the Ozma Regent and his ruling family. Such a shocker! But having changed an iconic figure of quirky modesty and goodness into a tyrant is only the first of Maguire's tricks: he also completely re-imagines the world into which the Wizard arrives. His characters traverse all four of the major Oz provinces (from Gillikin, the rich North, to The Vinkus, the arid West) and along the way the reader is privy to the many vivid imaginings he instills in these lands. More than that he laces his entire work with a gidy cynicism and black humor. Together these two elements form a nifty little elixir of an idea (swirled together from creativity and wit) that has propulsive effect: one finds it difficult to stop reading and reading, curious to see his next inspired revisionist twist.
Anticipation proves a killer however. As the plot kicks into high gear - from Elphaba's days as an activist college student to her days of political exile to her murder - Wicked runs alittle rampant. First off, the author loses sight of his characters, specifically the larger ones. As the chief example of such oversight, our newly discovered heroine also suffers the worst; she leaps from tartly anti-social to malicious to benevolent to submissive and back again in the span of these 400-pages. It's a lurching transition every time. Furthermore her friends seem just as foggy: Avaric, the handsome snob, is a "perfect asshole" until he carries on a genial debate with the Witch near the end of the book while Glinda the Good Witch goes from shallow and likeable to merely shallow (is she a pawn? is she ignorant? does anyone care? hello?).
Lacking strong character foundations, the entire point of Maguire's story (to delve into what made the Wicked Witch "wicked") gets lost in all of his noise. The noise though is almost worth the show. Drenched in homoeroticism, skewered with irony, and set aflame over the roasting coals of giddy toxic sarcasm, the prose of Wicked seethes with tons of combustible, compulsive humor and black-hearted delight. It's a good thing too, since as a main attraction the plot serves up aces until it sputters out at the end with a clenchingly un-satisfying final few pages. I guess the jokes on Maguire then for having engaged himself and the reader on the issue of trancendentalism, the search for a soul, the root of evil, "evil" and history since he can't seem to keep steady with any serious pondering (or, gasp!, ephiphany).
Let's stop for a moment though and consider something interesting but difficult to spot: the fact that Gregory Maguire is actually a pretty proficient word smith, especially late in the book. He toys around with a metaphorical examination of the creation of icicles, spends pages on the architectural stylings of Oz-cities, and has a canny physical curiousity for his creations. As writers go, let's not go so far as to say that all there is to the author of Wicked is a neat-o-keen creativte streak but to think there's a whole lot residing under his crackling send-up would be a misreprensentation; lacking truly rounded personalities to people his pages with and a sorely needed idea of thematic closure, the novel leaves you with a mere vestige of depth...but it, as Maguire himself might say, is something.
And if this sounds all alittle quiet, rote even, things get pumping in quick fashion. It turns out the Wizard isn't a kindly, bumbling, old man (a la the '39 movie version); instead he is a politically wily despot who, flying down from the sky on his famous red hot-air balloon, quickly stirs up a coup and takes the reigns from the Ozma Regent and his ruling family. Such a shocker! But having changed an iconic figure of quirky modesty and goodness into a tyrant is only the first of Maguire's tricks: he also completely re-imagines the world into which the Wizard arrives. His characters traverse all four of the major Oz provinces (from Gillikin, the rich North, to The Vinkus, the arid West) and along the way the reader is privy to the many vivid imaginings he instills in these lands. More than that he laces his entire work with a gidy cynicism and black humor. Together these two elements form a nifty little elixir of an idea (swirled together from creativity and wit) that has propulsive effect: one finds it difficult to stop reading and reading, curious to see his next inspired revisionist twist.
Anticipation proves a killer however. As the plot kicks into high gear - from Elphaba's days as an activist college student to her days of political exile to her murder - Wicked runs alittle rampant. First off, the author loses sight of his characters, specifically the larger ones. As the chief example of such oversight, our newly discovered heroine also suffers the worst; she leaps from tartly anti-social to malicious to benevolent to submissive and back again in the span of these 400-pages. It's a lurching transition every time. Furthermore her friends seem just as foggy: Avaric, the handsome snob, is a "perfect asshole" until he carries on a genial debate with the Witch near the end of the book while Glinda the Good Witch goes from shallow and likeable to merely shallow (is she a pawn? is she ignorant? does anyone care? hello?).
Lacking strong character foundations, the entire point of Maguire's story (to delve into what made the Wicked Witch "wicked") gets lost in all of his noise. The noise though is almost worth the show. Drenched in homoeroticism, skewered with irony, and set aflame over the roasting coals of giddy toxic sarcasm, the prose of Wicked seethes with tons of combustible, compulsive humor and black-hearted delight. It's a good thing too, since as a main attraction the plot serves up aces until it sputters out at the end with a clenchingly un-satisfying final few pages. I guess the jokes on Maguire then for having engaged himself and the reader on the issue of trancendentalism, the search for a soul, the root of evil, "evil" and history since he can't seem to keep steady with any serious pondering (or, gasp!, ephiphany).
Let's stop for a moment though and consider something interesting but difficult to spot: the fact that Gregory Maguire is actually a pretty proficient word smith, especially late in the book. He toys around with a metaphorical examination of the creation of icicles, spends pages on the architectural stylings of Oz-cities, and has a canny physical curiousity for his creations. As writers go, let's not go so far as to say that all there is to the author of Wicked is a neat-o-keen creativte streak but to think there's a whole lot residing under his crackling send-up would be a misreprensentation; lacking truly rounded personalities to people his pages with and a sorely needed idea of thematic closure, the novel leaves you with a mere vestige of depth...but it, as Maguire himself might say, is something.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A
The wonders of a great book are many, but rarely encountered; once discovered, these novels are difficult if not impossible to put down. You race and race through the pages, eyes glued to the page while the dawn approaches and you start to smell alittle like the stuff in the back of your fridge. But more than that you leap backwards and forwards over the pages, the prose, and the plot - savoring the rarely seen magnificence of a great writer turning their genius into brilliant art. This is, in more or less a small paragraph, how I felt while reading J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - a big, cathartic rush of a tale bursting with satisfaction. The achievements of Rowling's creation will be espoused about at length below but what stands monumentally to all first & foremost is her endurance in imagination; that after seven (seven!) books about a teenage wizard, she remains as she was from the start: a storyteller of breathtaking skill underscored always by her wry, bleak, mirthful intelligence.
But let us start from the beginning of this final chapter (while also trying to dodge spoiling even a tad of the unspooling events). Lord Voldemort, the serpentine spector hovering as the Big Bad for all of the series, marshals his armies still - his coming storm growing more nefarious and lethal by the day. His plans, something woven together by Rowling from Hitler to Vader, march ceaselessly onward from the very first chapter of the book; his malevolence present on nearly every page. From the opening flight to the Burrow to the triumphant return to Hogwarts at the end, the Dark Lord is there. Yet the darkening disaster that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named represents has a flaw...the Boy Who Lived - (a nearly grown) Harry Potter.
Harry still seeks the Horcruxes and he still travels with his best friends, Hermione and Ron. That his search for the dark artifacts protecting Voldemort's soul is intensely enthralling while rarely cheery is a major accomplishment; that Hermione and Ron grower deeper, more lovable as time goes on remains another; and that Harry himself has grown from symbolic savior to bedraggled teen and back again is perhaps the crowning jewel of the book. Except to say that I'd also have to discount the vivid duels, battles, escapes, break-ins, pacts, plans, and dragon flights that also occur. To say that Deathly Hallows is a narrative with a lot going for it would be an understatement; if average novels were a meal, here you will find a feast.
This extends as well to the author's keen mind and wry wit. It is and always has been a delicious treat to watch her prose scintillate with such droll humor and in her latest, though lacking much of Dolores Umbridge (much...but not all!), she rattles off more than enough deliciously dark quips and quotes to satisfy any reader looking for a laugh (though the irony of one coming here, a grand political allegory and adventure saga, for humor is almost too much to bear).
All joking aside, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an emotionally-stirring, masterful piece of fiction and Rowling its emotionally-stirring, masterful creator. The myriad loose ends of her tale are wrapped up with minimal effort; the expected "explanations" given vivid sprucing up when they occur during oh, say, a trip down the last memory lane you'd expect. To top it all off, the final pages tell not of that climactic showdown we've waited nearly 10 years for but of the aftermath; and let it be known that this boldly domestic, even quiet, epilogue marks a perfect ending to a perfect story - one, as they say, for the ages. In the end it is with great sadness that I depart from Rowling's world yet it is with still greater joy that I think back upon it; upon a spell of happiness and wonder that breaks not even to this day.
But let us start from the beginning of this final chapter (while also trying to dodge spoiling even a tad of the unspooling events). Lord Voldemort, the serpentine spector hovering as the Big Bad for all of the series, marshals his armies still - his coming storm growing more nefarious and lethal by the day. His plans, something woven together by Rowling from Hitler to Vader, march ceaselessly onward from the very first chapter of the book; his malevolence present on nearly every page. From the opening flight to the Burrow to the triumphant return to Hogwarts at the end, the Dark Lord is there. Yet the darkening disaster that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named represents has a flaw...the Boy Who Lived - (a nearly grown) Harry Potter.
Harry still seeks the Horcruxes and he still travels with his best friends, Hermione and Ron. That his search for the dark artifacts protecting Voldemort's soul is intensely enthralling while rarely cheery is a major accomplishment; that Hermione and Ron grower deeper, more lovable as time goes on remains another; and that Harry himself has grown from symbolic savior to bedraggled teen and back again is perhaps the crowning jewel of the book. Except to say that I'd also have to discount the vivid duels, battles, escapes, break-ins, pacts, plans, and dragon flights that also occur. To say that Deathly Hallows is a narrative with a lot going for it would be an understatement; if average novels were a meal, here you will find a feast.
This extends as well to the author's keen mind and wry wit. It is and always has been a delicious treat to watch her prose scintillate with such droll humor and in her latest, though lacking much of Dolores Umbridge (much...but not all!), she rattles off more than enough deliciously dark quips and quotes to satisfy any reader looking for a laugh (though the irony of one coming here, a grand political allegory and adventure saga, for humor is almost too much to bear).
All joking aside, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an emotionally-stirring, masterful piece of fiction and Rowling its emotionally-stirring, masterful creator. The myriad loose ends of her tale are wrapped up with minimal effort; the expected "explanations" given vivid sprucing up when they occur during oh, say, a trip down the last memory lane you'd expect. To top it all off, the final pages tell not of that climactic showdown we've waited nearly 10 years for but of the aftermath; and let it be known that this boldly domestic, even quiet, epilogue marks a perfect ending to a perfect story - one, as they say, for the ages. In the end it is with great sadness that I depart from Rowling's world yet it is with still greater joy that I think back upon it; upon a spell of happiness and wonder that breaks not even to this day.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Best of Youth: A
I feel now that I just must travel to Italy; and not just for the beautiful vistas, the earthy populace (in whose deeply sincere smiles I would probably melt), and roiling rrrrrr's of the native land. No, I would go searching for the Carati family - and I would leave dissapointed. Because no family in all of Italy (of even I wager, the world) could magic the enchantment cast by the central clan in Marco Tullio Giordana's spellbinding, epic, nearly flawless The Best of Youth. Weaving elements of character interaction via smartly written dialogue over hotly debated areas of sociopolitics has been done before (Crash) but nowhere have I seen it done more exquisitely than here. Characters don't just interact - they grow, blossom, stumble, fail, succeed, die, and above else, live. Dialogue isn't just tossed back in forth - it is spoken with all of the broiling emotions of reality (as well of all of its brains). And here the sociopolitics don't take a passive-agressive stance as eerily, persistently, "present" - they are are there, subtly, as an element of behavior and geography and not as a glaring excalamtion point of a screenwriter's "vision". Quite frankly, The Best of Youth views life through a lens all too often discarded by Hollywood - real life.
And yet to say that the main characters of the film, Matteo (Alessio Boni) and his younger brother Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio), are grudgingly "realistic" people - "people" like ourselves who gripe and complain all day - is too tell a grotesquely sadistic lie. Instead, the two brothers at the core of the film are articulate, wondrous human beings...and yet not without their flaws.
These flaws - Matteo is a hot-headed, righteous crusader while Nicola is an eternally benevolent humanitarian - are at times key to major plot points. The first of such points occurs as the essential start of the film. When Matteo rescues a patient, Giorgia (Jasmine Trinca), from a mental institution he unknowingly begins a short-lived quest that will forever instrinically weave itself into the moral character of he and his brother. To be blunt their quest to save Giorgia fails and its consequences are subtle, tragic things. Matteo, the sensitive academic searching for problems to fix, incurs a blow heavy enough to leave permanent, volatile, scars in his emotional armor, while Nicola sets himself up to become a figure of (occasionally tragic yet always endless) empathy. To say more of the plot would spoil it; suffice to say that on one summer's trip-turned-failed-adventure two Italians almost imperceptibly set themselves on the road of the rest of their lives.
But oh what lives! The remainder of Youth details their next 40 years - together and apart - as they experience personal epiphanies and national tragedy. Alone however they are not. Lovers, wives, children, parents, grand-children, friends, students, patients, and a few others all flit through or settle into the Carati family - a group of luminous individuals who together become a sublimely radiant whole. As such a cohesive family they, like all good families, talk...alot. The script, by Sandro Petraglia & Stefano Rulli, understands this with more intimacy, humor, compassion, bravado, heartache, understanding, and forgiveness than roughly 20 American films put together. The effect is such that each scene, be it short or effusively long, is not only directed by Giordana with mesmerizing skill but also constantly anchored in the divine words of its characters - who as such, being mediums of such believable speech, become characters no longer; they become real. Or such was my feeling as I neared the end of this massive, massively effecting saga.
And by massive, I do mean massive. As all reviews of The Best of Youth must invariably begin, the film is almost six hours long (yes, six). I have chosen however to reveal this at the end. To me it didn't matter how long the film was, quite the opposite; as the final stories of Nicola and Matteo played out on screen - against an ever changing tapestry of national, personal, and emotional elements - I wanted desparately almost to have it go on longer, the characters to continue talking and laughing, crying and reminiscing. Shocking isn't it? that a story spanning four decades, dozens of family members (and just as many great performances), a few key world events, maybe one or two choice devastations, and acres and acres of great dialogue could be this ravishing and amazing. But I don't lie - The Best of Youth is a film like no other. Find it and watch it, then call me in the morning.
And yet to say that the main characters of the film, Matteo (Alessio Boni) and his younger brother Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio), are grudgingly "realistic" people - "people" like ourselves who gripe and complain all day - is too tell a grotesquely sadistic lie. Instead, the two brothers at the core of the film are articulate, wondrous human beings...and yet not without their flaws.
These flaws - Matteo is a hot-headed, righteous crusader while Nicola is an eternally benevolent humanitarian - are at times key to major plot points. The first of such points occurs as the essential start of the film. When Matteo rescues a patient, Giorgia (Jasmine Trinca), from a mental institution he unknowingly begins a short-lived quest that will forever instrinically weave itself into the moral character of he and his brother. To be blunt their quest to save Giorgia fails and its consequences are subtle, tragic things. Matteo, the sensitive academic searching for problems to fix, incurs a blow heavy enough to leave permanent, volatile, scars in his emotional armor, while Nicola sets himself up to become a figure of (occasionally tragic yet always endless) empathy. To say more of the plot would spoil it; suffice to say that on one summer's trip-turned-failed-adventure two Italians almost imperceptibly set themselves on the road of the rest of their lives.
But oh what lives! The remainder of Youth details their next 40 years - together and apart - as they experience personal epiphanies and national tragedy. Alone however they are not. Lovers, wives, children, parents, grand-children, friends, students, patients, and a few others all flit through or settle into the Carati family - a group of luminous individuals who together become a sublimely radiant whole. As such a cohesive family they, like all good families, talk...alot. The script, by Sandro Petraglia & Stefano Rulli, understands this with more intimacy, humor, compassion, bravado, heartache, understanding, and forgiveness than roughly 20 American films put together. The effect is such that each scene, be it short or effusively long, is not only directed by Giordana with mesmerizing skill but also constantly anchored in the divine words of its characters - who as such, being mediums of such believable speech, become characters no longer; they become real. Or such was my feeling as I neared the end of this massive, massively effecting saga.
And by massive, I do mean massive. As all reviews of The Best of Youth must invariably begin, the film is almost six hours long (yes, six). I have chosen however to reveal this at the end. To me it didn't matter how long the film was, quite the opposite; as the final stories of Nicola and Matteo played out on screen - against an ever changing tapestry of national, personal, and emotional elements - I wanted desparately almost to have it go on longer, the characters to continue talking and laughing, crying and reminiscing. Shocking isn't it? that a story spanning four decades, dozens of family members (and just as many great performances), a few key world events, maybe one or two choice devastations, and acres and acres of great dialogue could be this ravishing and amazing. But I don't lie - The Best of Youth is a film like no other. Find it and watch it, then call me in the morning.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: B
There is a curse and a blessing built-in to one's viewing experience of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when one has already raced through J.K. Rowling's book on which the movie is based. I was one such of these people and so suffered the fate of probably millions: that of watching the dense, vivid narrative of the book go through the process of a slash-and-burn adaptation. Director David Yates has been quoted as saying that they couldn't have possibly kept all the sub-plots and character interaction of Rowling's story arc (which in this chapter details the early stirrings of rebellion against Lord Voldemort's - played with ever more slithery grace by Ralph Fiennes - growing army) which is perfectly understandable - the book was after all more than 800 pages - and yet is this literary translation a triumph of down-sizing? Not quite. Though there are still many familiar delights to the movie series (Alan Rickman continually steals his every scene as venomous Professor Snape) and a few new ones (Imelda Staunton as coated-in-pink Professor Umbridge), this latest installment underwhelms with its leaner tale, skinnier character portraits and flashier, colder, magical duels.
When we first meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) he's a simmering stew of late-adolescent hormones and helplessness who feels as if, quite literally, life is passing him by. Not only that, but he also feels out-of-the-loop when it comes to battling the Dark Lord, a fact made all the worst by the nasty propaganda spread by a fearlessly fearful Minister of Magic (Robert Hardy) concerning Harry's mental state (FYI: most people are put-out by a determinded doom sayer, even when said sayer is right). All in all, our dear hero is having a pretty lousy summer...until he encounters a few choice dark creatures. The ensuing battle, and the events that follow, enfold Harry once again in the sumptuous, dark currents of J.K. Rowling's magical creation of a wizarding world.
You thought I meant in the movie? Well, I did...sort of. In the movie most of what I described above does in fact happen, but it rushes by in a visual whirlwind with an angry Mr. Potter as its powering force. Yet the wonder and magic of his battle (and subsequent trial) lasts only long enough to get your hopes up...then deflates. Every time I wanted to get on the movie's wavelength I was held back by the thought that for those who hadn't indulged in the literary form of Harry's adventures, this would all seem alittle confusing...or stupid...or grim...or boring. The script, by Michael Goldenberg, is funny and even quite entertaining but as a translation of the source material its far too reliant on previous knowledge; or worse, it just doesn't care.
I say all of this in a roundabout way of asking a question: if, as in the movie, Harry becomes progressively more withdrawn without a reason how are we to sympathize or relate? The answer: we remember exactly how he felt in the book! Ok, here's another riddle: how are we to react to the scene on film when Cho and Harry kiss if we hadn't seen a few sparks between them beforehand? The answer: we remember all their little flirty exchanges and cautious manueverings from the book! See a pattern? This isn't to say that Yates method of staging the film as more literal than mental, more "magical" than, you know, actually magical is overtly offensive or faulty. But the thought that the hefty emotions and rounded tales of the book had been cut and butchered for the meat at their center couldn't escape me; that no matter how many nifty British actors popped up to glaze the screen in a comic firestorm or in tasty sarcasm the fact of the matter still remains unchanged: this is one for the readers, longing to see their beloved characters and memorized bits of dialogue on screen, not for the moviegoers, excited at the thought of meeting and hearing all of this for the first time. The difference? Nostalgia or delight; fond remembrance or blazing wonder.
When we first meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) he's a simmering stew of late-adolescent hormones and helplessness who feels as if, quite literally, life is passing him by. Not only that, but he also feels out-of-the-loop when it comes to battling the Dark Lord, a fact made all the worst by the nasty propaganda spread by a fearlessly fearful Minister of Magic (Robert Hardy) concerning Harry's mental state (FYI: most people are put-out by a determinded doom sayer, even when said sayer is right). All in all, our dear hero is having a pretty lousy summer...until he encounters a few choice dark creatures. The ensuing battle, and the events that follow, enfold Harry once again in the sumptuous, dark currents of J.K. Rowling's magical creation of a wizarding world.
You thought I meant in the movie? Well, I did...sort of. In the movie most of what I described above does in fact happen, but it rushes by in a visual whirlwind with an angry Mr. Potter as its powering force. Yet the wonder and magic of his battle (and subsequent trial) lasts only long enough to get your hopes up...then deflates. Every time I wanted to get on the movie's wavelength I was held back by the thought that for those who hadn't indulged in the literary form of Harry's adventures, this would all seem alittle confusing...or stupid...or grim...or boring. The script, by Michael Goldenberg, is funny and even quite entertaining but as a translation of the source material its far too reliant on previous knowledge; or worse, it just doesn't care.
I say all of this in a roundabout way of asking a question: if, as in the movie, Harry becomes progressively more withdrawn without a reason how are we to sympathize or relate? The answer: we remember exactly how he felt in the book! Ok, here's another riddle: how are we to react to the scene on film when Cho and Harry kiss if we hadn't seen a few sparks between them beforehand? The answer: we remember all their little flirty exchanges and cautious manueverings from the book! See a pattern? This isn't to say that Yates method of staging the film as more literal than mental, more "magical" than, you know, actually magical is overtly offensive or faulty. But the thought that the hefty emotions and rounded tales of the book had been cut and butchered for the meat at their center couldn't escape me; that no matter how many nifty British actors popped up to glaze the screen in a comic firestorm or in tasty sarcasm the fact of the matter still remains unchanged: this is one for the readers, longing to see their beloved characters and memorized bits of dialogue on screen, not for the moviegoers, excited at the thought of meeting and hearing all of this for the first time. The difference? Nostalgia or delight; fond remembrance or blazing wonder.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Punch-Drunk Love: A-
When a film stars Adam Sandler as a repressed nut-job you except several things; you expect fat men who fart and burp (occasionally while smothering someone else); you expect senile old-women who like to curse and hit people with their canes; you expect the number of toilet jokes to skyrocket past 97 before you've even hit the half-way mark. What you don't expect, what I didn't expect, is for a film staring America's favorite idiot to be so tenderly alive. In the delicately beautiful tale of Barry Egan's (Adam Sandler) romance with Lena Leonard (Emily Watson) writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson finds as much thematically rich material here as in his 180-minute virtuoso opera Magnolia while also scaling down his camera from a cast of dozens to a cast of two. What he shows us, while his cameras are flying about in exuberant gestures around these two oddballs, refreshes and revitalizes the genre of romantic-comedy with enormous heart and inventiveness.
I'll start with Barry's character. He constantly wears an electric-blue suit. He's a nervous man who runs a business selling plungers. He has seven sisters. He is prone to explosions of rage. He has (presumably) never dated another woman, or even thought of her in romantic terms. He is an emotional and mental wreck. If this sounds like alot to swallow, or even wrap your head around, the film wastes no time in shrouding his character; the opening scene renders him as he is in the above paragraph with barely a spoken word. Still, as such a freak how are we supposed to be allowed to care for him? The answer lies in the nature of his psychosis - he's a wreck, but he's a uniquely 21st century wreck. The fact that he was mothered by seven sisters from birth may be at the root of his problems but living in the Now has exacerbated them into who he is when he and the audience first meet. Atleast he's lucky enough to be played by Adam Sandler, allowing him a modicum of immediate empathy from all the crazed Happy Gilmore fans out there.
Barry's also lucky, and un-, in a few other ways. First he has a chance meeting with a woman named Lena when she comes to get her car fixed at the mechanic next to his store. One thing leads to another and they end up dating. The most refreshing thing about his meeting her is how he is stripped of his mannerisms and let free; or rather, how is big discombobulated mess of a self finally finds a center in passion for a woman. There's a flip side though. When Barry and Lena start dating he's already being black-mailed by a phone sex operator and her pimp (Philip Seymour Hoffman). There's a touch of surreal black comedy in the set-up - Boy gets lonely, Boy calls Phone Sex Girl, Boy gets Stalked by Phone Sex Girl - and the film has sevral laughs at the contrast between a great love and a cheap one.
But Barry and Lena are definitely the great love. I can tell that by the way that Anderson's camera practically swoons over the two and how his music choices jump from the instrumental to the enrapturing everytime they meet. It's ok though that the puppy-dog romance is given such a treatment in Love. We want these characters to be happy. Emily Watson, with a delicious lilting British accent, is charmingly charming as saintly Lena and Sandler never once strays into over-acting; his Barry is as sweetly human around his girl as he isn't around anyone else. The genius of it all though, the great thing that the film pulls off here, is in making our hero-in-need-of-romance such a modern mess the whole formula of rom-com's is turned on its ear. Where once it was the search for perfection-meets-perfection (because, really, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan's beauty would have killed anyone else they fell for), in Punch-Drunk Love it becomes the search for like-meets-like; two people who happen to be alittle charming happen to fall alittle in love.
The final uber-trick Paul Thomas Anderson pulls out of his bag is in the visual styling. Now I won't make any excuses for the LSD-meets-disco interludes but I will happily exclaim the excellence of some of the director's finer points - such as Barry's suit, as a wail of depression, or Lena's dress, a jolt of passion. To me, this is the kind of film that David Lynch might have been accused of making, where the subversive currents of life manipulate a person more than the person manipulates the currents. The problem is that in Lynch's hands Punch-Drunk Love would have been stupefyingly inert, whereas crafted by Anderson everything - from the harmonium at the beginning to the scheme with the pudding throughout - makes sense. He turns imagination into the grand liberator of romance. Not only that, he sparks a vital presence in Adam Sandler that burns bright for his career.
I'll start with Barry's character. He constantly wears an electric-blue suit. He's a nervous man who runs a business selling plungers. He has seven sisters. He is prone to explosions of rage. He has (presumably) never dated another woman, or even thought of her in romantic terms. He is an emotional and mental wreck. If this sounds like alot to swallow, or even wrap your head around, the film wastes no time in shrouding his character; the opening scene renders him as he is in the above paragraph with barely a spoken word. Still, as such a freak how are we supposed to be allowed to care for him? The answer lies in the nature of his psychosis - he's a wreck, but he's a uniquely 21st century wreck. The fact that he was mothered by seven sisters from birth may be at the root of his problems but living in the Now has exacerbated them into who he is when he and the audience first meet. Atleast he's lucky enough to be played by Adam Sandler, allowing him a modicum of immediate empathy from all the crazed Happy Gilmore fans out there.
Barry's also lucky, and un-, in a few other ways. First he has a chance meeting with a woman named Lena when she comes to get her car fixed at the mechanic next to his store. One thing leads to another and they end up dating. The most refreshing thing about his meeting her is how he is stripped of his mannerisms and let free; or rather, how is big discombobulated mess of a self finally finds a center in passion for a woman. There's a flip side though. When Barry and Lena start dating he's already being black-mailed by a phone sex operator and her pimp (Philip Seymour Hoffman). There's a touch of surreal black comedy in the set-up - Boy gets lonely, Boy calls Phone Sex Girl, Boy gets Stalked by Phone Sex Girl - and the film has sevral laughs at the contrast between a great love and a cheap one.
But Barry and Lena are definitely the great love. I can tell that by the way that Anderson's camera practically swoons over the two and how his music choices jump from the instrumental to the enrapturing everytime they meet. It's ok though that the puppy-dog romance is given such a treatment in Love. We want these characters to be happy. Emily Watson, with a delicious lilting British accent, is charmingly charming as saintly Lena and Sandler never once strays into over-acting; his Barry is as sweetly human around his girl as he isn't around anyone else. The genius of it all though, the great thing that the film pulls off here, is in making our hero-in-need-of-romance such a modern mess the whole formula of rom-com's is turned on its ear. Where once it was the search for perfection-meets-perfection (because, really, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan's beauty would have killed anyone else they fell for), in Punch-Drunk Love it becomes the search for like-meets-like; two people who happen to be alittle charming happen to fall alittle in love.
The final uber-trick Paul Thomas Anderson pulls out of his bag is in the visual styling. Now I won't make any excuses for the LSD-meets-disco interludes but I will happily exclaim the excellence of some of the director's finer points - such as Barry's suit, as a wail of depression, or Lena's dress, a jolt of passion. To me, this is the kind of film that David Lynch might have been accused of making, where the subversive currents of life manipulate a person more than the person manipulates the currents. The problem is that in Lynch's hands Punch-Drunk Love would have been stupefyingly inert, whereas crafted by Anderson everything - from the harmonium at the beginning to the scheme with the pudding throughout - makes sense. He turns imagination into the grand liberator of romance. Not only that, he sparks a vital presence in Adam Sandler that burns bright for his career.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Hercules: B+
There's a shockingly good moment in Ron Clements and Jon Musker's Hercules that ranks right up there with when Dory first appeared in Finding Nemo in terms of crackling comic effect. The moment centers around Hades (James Woods) attempts to woo the future from the three Fates and the hilarious genius of the scene is tied directly into how much knowing, lovable sarcasm Woods laces his words with. As his flaming villain stalks around the room, reciting his "Grand Plan" for the three blind oracles (rendered with some visual gags that'll make you giggle) his wails of fury and desparation become strangely endearing; his mood swings stop being evil and start being "evil" and the uber-sly joke is that Hades is in on it with the audience. His desert-dry delivery carries a twinkle of malevolent glee missing from even most live-action baddies.
But if I found James Woods the most delicious scenery chewing villain on screen in some time, its not like I found the rest of Hercules trashy-camp (although, at moments, I was tempted to say so) - quite the opposite. If Hades is the perfect 21st century antagonist - funny, vicious, likeable and constantly the zippy entertainer (even if his act involves taking over the world) - then the movie surrounding him comes pretty close to immitating his style.
Hercules surounds the famed Greek myth-hero with air quotes, at once mocking and sentimentalizing his clumsy hunkiness, and watching "Herc" (Tate Donovan) trip his way through adolescence I found it quite difficult to resist the movie's point-of-view. Soon enough I was chuckling at the massive destruction he could cause with one small slip of his enormous strength while also going googly-eyed at the bombast inspiration of his singing (yes, yes - it's one of those Disney films). What Hercules is saying in essence is "we know he's a big STRONG man, but can't he also be a goofball with heart?". After watching the bite-sized 92 minutes of this playful fable I can answer easily, "yes, he can".
Another major point of applause comes from the staging of the story and in the way that co-writers/directors Clements & Musker keep curving the story. Though it focuses on Hercules' quest to reclaim his place on Olympus (he was slighted out his seat by a mortal-transformation potion delivered by Pain & Panic, two of Hades' minions) the real action unfolds on a few different layers, leaving the audience to which it is being seen thrilled on many different levels. There's the beautiful zap! of his many different deeds (the infamous Hydra fight is a hallmark of 3-D animation); there's the romance with the venomous, sexy Meg (Susan Egan); there's the underlying pull of identity and one's search for it (scored to a few FM-lite tracks that get your toes-tapping, if not your body-shaking). And the packaging of these elements, interwoven with ease by the veteran filmmakers behind Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, comes at you from the saucy gospel-group that narrates the whole thing. That's right, a gospel group - complete with fiery, delicious "Amen!" anthems.
The giddy ironies of Hercules spring straight from our media-saturated sensibilities and many of the jokes are written, and delivered, with pitch-perfect flair. What could have been a soggy story became a sprightly one. Still, the lasting contribution of this film is and will always be James Woods' terrificly entertaining performance. His cantankerous Anti-Christ is one evil dude, true, but as the best part of a pretty good movie he's also the film's soul: megalomania as done by a winking, sardonic ironist. Brilliant.
But if I found James Woods the most delicious scenery chewing villain on screen in some time, its not like I found the rest of Hercules trashy-camp (although, at moments, I was tempted to say so) - quite the opposite. If Hades is the perfect 21st century antagonist - funny, vicious, likeable and constantly the zippy entertainer (even if his act involves taking over the world) - then the movie surrounding him comes pretty close to immitating his style.
Hercules surounds the famed Greek myth-hero with air quotes, at once mocking and sentimentalizing his clumsy hunkiness, and watching "Herc" (Tate Donovan) trip his way through adolescence I found it quite difficult to resist the movie's point-of-view. Soon enough I was chuckling at the massive destruction he could cause with one small slip of his enormous strength while also going googly-eyed at the bombast inspiration of his singing (yes, yes - it's one of those Disney films). What Hercules is saying in essence is "we know he's a big STRONG man, but can't he also be a goofball with heart?". After watching the bite-sized 92 minutes of this playful fable I can answer easily, "yes, he can".
Another major point of applause comes from the staging of the story and in the way that co-writers/directors Clements & Musker keep curving the story. Though it focuses on Hercules' quest to reclaim his place on Olympus (he was slighted out his seat by a mortal-transformation potion delivered by Pain & Panic, two of Hades' minions) the real action unfolds on a few different layers, leaving the audience to which it is being seen thrilled on many different levels. There's the beautiful zap! of his many different deeds (the infamous Hydra fight is a hallmark of 3-D animation); there's the romance with the venomous, sexy Meg (Susan Egan); there's the underlying pull of identity and one's search for it (scored to a few FM-lite tracks that get your toes-tapping, if not your body-shaking). And the packaging of these elements, interwoven with ease by the veteran filmmakers behind Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, comes at you from the saucy gospel-group that narrates the whole thing. That's right, a gospel group - complete with fiery, delicious "Amen!" anthems.
The giddy ironies of Hercules spring straight from our media-saturated sensibilities and many of the jokes are written, and delivered, with pitch-perfect flair. What could have been a soggy story became a sprightly one. Still, the lasting contribution of this film is and will always be James Woods' terrificly entertaining performance. His cantankerous Anti-Christ is one evil dude, true, but as the best part of a pretty good movie he's also the film's soul: megalomania as done by a winking, sardonic ironist. Brilliant.
The Elephant Man: C+
It started with Mulholland Drive. I was hooked from the get-go by this surrealist noir that had moments of enthralling fetish poetry and yet the end result - something, I dare say, that is difficult to "spoil" - left me madly irritated. Next came The Elephant Man and in this faux-empathetic bio-pic of Joseph "John" Merrick, a man horribly afflicted with elephantitis, I suffered the same fate as before: I ended my viewing experience not where was desired (surely that must have been inspiration or hope) but where it wasn't (angered, mildly distraught). After a few moments pause everything finally clicked: David Lynch, with his hypno-dreamy visual style and penchant for shallow stereotypes in a one-note cruel joke world, really bothers me.
People have hailed him as a visionary since his career exploded with the late 80's sadomasochistic thriller Blue Velvet. From then on his dischordant films, celebrating everything from Southern-goth violent rebels to actresses suffering from seeming schizophrenia, have been called onto the stage as "best films of the year" and as the recipient of multiple Oscars. It doesn't do this critic one bit of good to see such things. True Lynch's skill as an ocular technician has some merit and he can coax true performances from his stars but there is an impervious, nagging refusal at the core of his movies that consistently leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth: every whim of a film - story, character, logic - are dictated by his "dream-like" fancies and the results range from the bizarrely watchable (the aforementioned Drive) to the cloyingly sentimental. The Elephant Man, his breakthrough film, lands squarely in the latter category.
The "Elephant Man" is infamous in history as a poor sufferer of a terrible fate. He was horribly disfigured from his back, covered in growths, to one of his arms, useless and floppy, to his head, shaped rather surprisingly, like a large malignant peanut. He was also a real person - Joseph Merrick. As a real person Merrick enjoyed the sympathies of Victorian England while also leading a dark second life as a freak-show attraction. In real life, Merrick eventually died at the young age of 27...a death now suspected as a suicide. Yet, besides enjoying pretty peoples' condolescenes, what did Merrick do with his life? This is a question supposedly answered with Lynch's film. It isn't. Lynch hardly even poses the question. Instead he re-hashes history with a few more dramatic liberties, the fictional Merrick (John Hurt) is victim to a toturous master (Freddie Jones) before being rescued by Dr. Treves (Anthony Hopkins), while skittering around a most pertinent question by posing one of his own: who cares?
The answer, I'm afraid, is probably no one. When The Elephant Man was first released, people went crazy - it won numerous awards. And watching it almost 30 years later it's easy to see why; the heart-string tugging story, of Merrick learning all the ways of society - from tea parties to model cathedral building - has inherent emotional overtones and Hurt's performance wins sympathy with incredible ease. Emotions are in fact manipulated so well that by the tragic end there isn't a dry eye left in the place. That is a problem though if as one is leaving the theater, or turning off the DVD player, all you can remember is "Gee, I can't believe he learned how to sip Earl Gray!". Shouldn't our hero deserve more to enlighten us as to his humanity than a tidy little box marked "Sympathetic Deformity" with which to put him in? Obviously David Lynch thought not and many agreed. I do not.
I argue instead, and as should be obvious, that the mark of any great film is the ability to build and exemplify the psychic confines of a character. All that the director does is continually deconstruct heart and humanity with great sadism, never leaving us with an honest-to-God shred of decency with which to cling to. The minute Merrick builds up self-confidence, have him kidnapped. The second he learns to be loved everywhere, have him die. These events play out with leaden literal-mindedness and overall, so too does the film. As "The Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick did great things - he learned how to speak for one, an act the film glosses over - and as the actors portraying and surrounding him, they do great things as well. But as a filmmaker David Lynch does one great big mediocre thing, he reduces an act of heroism into "heroism" - from a man overcoming great disease to a man who can socialize with the wealthy and shriveled.
People have hailed him as a visionary since his career exploded with the late 80's sadomasochistic thriller Blue Velvet. From then on his dischordant films, celebrating everything from Southern-goth violent rebels to actresses suffering from seeming schizophrenia, have been called onto the stage as "best films of the year" and as the recipient of multiple Oscars. It doesn't do this critic one bit of good to see such things. True Lynch's skill as an ocular technician has some merit and he can coax true performances from his stars but there is an impervious, nagging refusal at the core of his movies that consistently leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth: every whim of a film - story, character, logic - are dictated by his "dream-like" fancies and the results range from the bizarrely watchable (the aforementioned Drive) to the cloyingly sentimental. The Elephant Man, his breakthrough film, lands squarely in the latter category.
The "Elephant Man" is infamous in history as a poor sufferer of a terrible fate. He was horribly disfigured from his back, covered in growths, to one of his arms, useless and floppy, to his head, shaped rather surprisingly, like a large malignant peanut. He was also a real person - Joseph Merrick. As a real person Merrick enjoyed the sympathies of Victorian England while also leading a dark second life as a freak-show attraction. In real life, Merrick eventually died at the young age of 27...a death now suspected as a suicide. Yet, besides enjoying pretty peoples' condolescenes, what did Merrick do with his life? This is a question supposedly answered with Lynch's film. It isn't. Lynch hardly even poses the question. Instead he re-hashes history with a few more dramatic liberties, the fictional Merrick (John Hurt) is victim to a toturous master (Freddie Jones) before being rescued by Dr. Treves (Anthony Hopkins), while skittering around a most pertinent question by posing one of his own: who cares?
The answer, I'm afraid, is probably no one. When The Elephant Man was first released, people went crazy - it won numerous awards. And watching it almost 30 years later it's easy to see why; the heart-string tugging story, of Merrick learning all the ways of society - from tea parties to model cathedral building - has inherent emotional overtones and Hurt's performance wins sympathy with incredible ease. Emotions are in fact manipulated so well that by the tragic end there isn't a dry eye left in the place. That is a problem though if as one is leaving the theater, or turning off the DVD player, all you can remember is "Gee, I can't believe he learned how to sip Earl Gray!". Shouldn't our hero deserve more to enlighten us as to his humanity than a tidy little box marked "Sympathetic Deformity" with which to put him in? Obviously David Lynch thought not and many agreed. I do not.
I argue instead, and as should be obvious, that the mark of any great film is the ability to build and exemplify the psychic confines of a character. All that the director does is continually deconstruct heart and humanity with great sadism, never leaving us with an honest-to-God shred of decency with which to cling to. The minute Merrick builds up self-confidence, have him kidnapped. The second he learns to be loved everywhere, have him die. These events play out with leaden literal-mindedness and overall, so too does the film. As "The Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick did great things - he learned how to speak for one, an act the film glosses over - and as the actors portraying and surrounding him, they do great things as well. But as a filmmaker David Lynch does one great big mediocre thing, he reduces an act of heroism into "heroism" - from a man overcoming great disease to a man who can socialize with the wealthy and shriveled.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Rescue Dawn: A-
Imagine for one moment that all the artifice surrounding and implanted in films was gone. All of the CGI effects and the grotesquely distorted villians and the "breathtaking" romance - all of it gone. Oh and the pesky precocious animals, they're gone too. Imagine then that where once a plot may have turned on events spawned by writers' brains, they now blossom - guided by the hand of Fate (which fits nicely into our motif of real life, right?). Imagine still that there would no longer exist actors desparately mugging for the camera; instead, and with a rigor and passion to be admired, they became their characters and invited us to watch their imitations instead of their performances. Imagine all of this at once and guess what? We've just envisioned something pretty close to Werner Herzog's lean, atmospheric Rescue Dawn - the tale of an escaped, ordinary POW played by an extraordinary Christian Bale.
Bale is Dieter Dingler, a Navy pilot assigned to bomb Laos in the '60s who was shot down and taken prisoner. As a prisoner he meets a few zonked out cats, chief among them is Gene (Jeffrey Davies), and wastes no time in formulating his escape. It'd be spoiling nothing to say he manages to do so - along with Duane (Steve Zahn), a fellow POW - and everything to divulge their experiences outside the camp. See, writer-director Herzog works in a rich, elemental style, building characters and relationships with broad, almost silent strokes and as such the final third of the film - their escape - is riveting and ripples with sinewy visual and emotional muscles.
Not to say that the actors don't provide the film with enough flavor and soul as it is. Bale, an always versatile performer, here astounds with a quiet, earnest, rock-solid piece of work. His counterpoint is found in Zahn who plays out his emotionally weak character with a fragility and grace that took me by surprise (being as he is standard comic foil in such things as Daddy Daycare). And I could never forget Jeremy Davies as the dead-eyed zombie nutzo Gene. Davies speaks in a particular flavor of hippie drawl and his every utterance is hilarious in a poignant, absurd way...that is until he takes a dive off the deep end, at which point his mania become palpable and thrilling.
Rescue Dawn is directed with clever image layering (and, with dare I say, far more skill than Oliver Stone) and there's alot to like, and partake of, in the humid jungles of Herzog's Laos; from the skittering score (to reflect the mental shambles of desertion and desolation) to the sunken faces (to reflect the poor nutrition), the film has a unique beauty - though it helps that it was all shot on location. And though it grows hazy and stilted from time to time (the scenes of their imprisonment drag on a tad too long) the stripped-down power of Dawn will sink into you and be difficult to get out.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Extraordinary Machine: A
I'll be the first to admit it: I love Fiona Apple. From my first introduction to her music - the melancholy, wry and beautiful "Paper Bag" - I have been perpetually hooked by her voice, her instrumentation, and her superb (always self-written) lyrics words. But more than that, as an artist she is a continually evolving wonder; from the opening rage of "Sleep to Dream" to the quiet finale of "I Know" Fiona Apple has taken an old standard - torch music - and constantly re-shaped it.
I may have listened to Tidal, her debut album, and thought that I was hearing a strong musician if not an exactly sophisticated and organized one (although to any who have listened to "Shadowboxer" or "Criminal" on repeat, feel free to disagree) but I was entranced at this 18-year old's large amount of talent. Next came When The Pawn..., her dazzlingly disturbed sophmore album, which managed the hefty feat of taking everything right in her music and separating it from everything wrong; it is no small thing to say she managed, and no smaller thing still to say the result was such an experience - jagged, raw, sincere, witty, dark, tragic - that I may never forget it.
Needless to say that after these two albums I was quite devoted to the Cult of Apple and then, nothing. She dissapeared from the music scene for six years until, finally, re-emerging with 2005's Extraordinary Machine - an album so true to the definition of "extraordinary" that it's been in consistent rotation on my stereo for going on two years.
It isn't so much on her third effort that Ms. Apple changes up her core formula (her anger is still front and center) so much as she has the window dressing. But in that minor change - if by minor I mean a new producer, Mike Elizondo, which I do - there is so much to love. This isn't to state that I found her previous collaborator, Jon Brion, to be of any offense but I've listened to those leaked tracks of his from the original Machine and let me just say: the result was not nearly as shimmeringly joyful, caustic, and memorable as this. From the soaring heartbreak of "O' Sailor" to the defiantly whimsical "Waltz (Better Than Fine)" the music surrounding the singer compliments her with delicious ingenuity.
And yet the singer taking center-stage is as worthy of recognition as her musical fancies. Her voice - a stewing, sullen, rough, cloudy, pouty, angry and sarcastic mix - still retains the impact of her two earlier albums (say what you will of her music elsewhere, but this girl can sing) while managing to add a surprising layer: happiness. Indeed on songs varied as the "Waltz", "Window" and the titular track, our classy damsel-in-distress now sports a measure of joy to go along with her spiky wit.
And of wit there is much (as well as a few other notable, necessary emotions). She throws out one-liners (better that I break the window/than him or her or me/especially me!) and put downs (I opened my eyes/while you were kissing me once.../and you looked as sincere as dog) with the same level of admirable blase and her narratives practically ooze sardonic venom. Don't think she isn' without heart - no, Extraordinary Machine is as much of a heartfelt confession as it is a scaborous tale of uplift and defiance. It is a ironic little secret that Fiona Apple is as much of a wounded romantic as she is an undiscovered protege of Dorothy Parker but there it is. She piles on the emotions onto her latest CD until you think she may sink from all that emotional baggage...and then she stays afloat.
But then she has always been a walking paradox hasn't she? Then to me what makes her such a talent and an enduring performer is that she parades her paradoxes, her confusing mental conondrums, with far more bruising honesty, droll wordplay and densely inventive arrangements than other similar self-conscious singer-songwriters. The final product, you'll doubtless find, is nothing less than wonderful.
I may have listened to Tidal, her debut album, and thought that I was hearing a strong musician if not an exactly sophisticated and organized one (although to any who have listened to "Shadowboxer" or "Criminal" on repeat, feel free to disagree) but I was entranced at this 18-year old's large amount of talent. Next came When The Pawn..., her dazzlingly disturbed sophmore album, which managed the hefty feat of taking everything right in her music and separating it from everything wrong; it is no small thing to say she managed, and no smaller thing still to say the result was such an experience - jagged, raw, sincere, witty, dark, tragic - that I may never forget it.
Needless to say that after these two albums I was quite devoted to the Cult of Apple and then, nothing. She dissapeared from the music scene for six years until, finally, re-emerging with 2005's Extraordinary Machine - an album so true to the definition of "extraordinary" that it's been in consistent rotation on my stereo for going on two years.
It isn't so much on her third effort that Ms. Apple changes up her core formula (her anger is still front and center) so much as she has the window dressing. But in that minor change - if by minor I mean a new producer, Mike Elizondo, which I do - there is so much to love. This isn't to state that I found her previous collaborator, Jon Brion, to be of any offense but I've listened to those leaked tracks of his from the original Machine and let me just say: the result was not nearly as shimmeringly joyful, caustic, and memorable as this. From the soaring heartbreak of "O' Sailor" to the defiantly whimsical "Waltz (Better Than Fine)" the music surrounding the singer compliments her with delicious ingenuity.
And yet the singer taking center-stage is as worthy of recognition as her musical fancies. Her voice - a stewing, sullen, rough, cloudy, pouty, angry and sarcastic mix - still retains the impact of her two earlier albums (say what you will of her music elsewhere, but this girl can sing) while managing to add a surprising layer: happiness. Indeed on songs varied as the "Waltz", "Window" and the titular track, our classy damsel-in-distress now sports a measure of joy to go along with her spiky wit.
And of wit there is much (as well as a few other notable, necessary emotions). She throws out one-liners (better that I break the window/than him or her or me/especially me!) and put downs (I opened my eyes/while you were kissing me once.../and you looked as sincere as dog) with the same level of admirable blase and her narratives practically ooze sardonic venom. Don't think she isn' without heart - no, Extraordinary Machine is as much of a heartfelt confession as it is a scaborous tale of uplift and defiance. It is a ironic little secret that Fiona Apple is as much of a wounded romantic as she is an undiscovered protege of Dorothy Parker but there it is. She piles on the emotions onto her latest CD until you think she may sink from all that emotional baggage...and then she stays afloat.
But then she has always been a walking paradox hasn't she? Then to me what makes her such a talent and an enduring performer is that she parades her paradoxes, her confusing mental conondrums, with far more bruising honesty, droll wordplay and densely inventive arrangements than other similar self-conscious singer-songwriters. The final product, you'll doubtless find, is nothing less than wonderful.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Founding Brothers: A-
Let's begin with a silly question: who likes learning about the American Revolution? Anyone? Ok, let's get more specific: who likes the learning about the Founding Fathers, those sage like demigods who have evolved in the last 200 years to become eternal paragons of American sainthood? I think, and do correct me if I'm wrong, that most people feel sleepy when the topic of Revolutionary history is discussed. And let me just say that I feature myself proudly among these people. Or at least, I did before I read Joseph Ellis' transfixing, deliriously researched, and astutely grounded Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. In Ellis' study of seven key figures of that early time in our Republic's history - Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Burr - the quaint and continual deconstruction of myth to man takes place over such a luxuriated well-written timespan that by the end, never again will you see our first Presidents in the same (sacred, shiny) light.
Our author begins with a tidy little preface - it is a quiet beginning and in retrospect a rather mundane introdution to such a deeply learned, fascinating literary voice - to outline the themes his book will espouse and discover pulsing throughtout the veins of our Revolutionary heroes. In no uncertain terms he makes the rather obvious, yet bold, claim that history as viewed then wasn't history at all; that what seemed certain to us, looking as we are through the pane of glass that is the last 200+ years, seemed more foreboding and improvised to them.
Following up this historical analysis is the book itself, seperated out over six vignettes of American history. It is these vignettes, Ellis says, that will cement to us all the true scope of the Revolution back then. Which is to say, there was no scope - except perhaps in Thomas Jefferson's mind. Well let me say, in no uncertain terms, that the vast rogue's gallery of crusty figures Ellis summons for his book prove his point and even more: they cement to us Ellis' talent as a historian of calm style and cool wit who turns past memories of hot days in a classroom into an exciting journey of surprising human depth.
He begins with the Hamilton-Burr duel. To those that don't know, it was a fatal contest of honor that resulted in Hamilton's death. The incident itself actually shares large portions of its screen time with other aspects of the showdown: Hamilton & Burr's respective political careers, their verbal war that lead to the gun battle, and the history of American dueling as a whole. These may seem odd puzzle pieces to fit together but they somehow are - in a fit of elegant writing that ties them all together by the image of that five-second clash (Hamilton's planned mis, Burr's un-planned hit). As historical dissections go, "The Duel" has more depth in its simple investigation than large portions of school-issued textbooks (plus, its fun to read!). Furthermore its the perfect opening act as it only hints at the discoveries to come: Jefferson's relationship to John Adams (a roller-coaster of a friendship), Washington's relationship to the public (a scarily eloof one), and Madison & Hamilton's relationships to the political scene (these two men could give Karl Rove a run for his money when it comes to brilliantly orchaestrated surges of political power) in addition to a few others.
Ellis launches into each of these new tales with relish and yet not losing a single drop of his cool demeanor and style. He sets up facts and fictions with straightforward no-nosense and his eventual conclusions (eluded to in the preface) are some tasty delights. It would be difficult for any writer, fiction or non, to match the divine experience of reading the twelve-year letterathon between Jefferson and Adams, a correspondence that started first as a reconcilliation following the party wars of the '90s and then evolved into a rumination on all the two had accomplished with the fledgling country. Their words speak for themselves, and Ellis lets them for the most part, but when the author does intrude it is only in the most elegant and un-intrusive of ways: to say with calm flourish that his points had been proven and his case won; that these weren't gods that planned our bloody uprsing, they were men of great ability and great flaws who were in the end capable of great humanity.
Finally though it isn't his separate stories that are the point, though they are arguably some of the more highly entertaining I've read, or even the understated thesis. No, the final point I think resides in the simple, easy, razor sharp rendering of Ellis' work; he has alchemized some of our greatest high school woes and boredoms into a supreme biography; a work of potent significance because it has done the impossible: it has grounded the Gods.
Our author begins with a tidy little preface - it is a quiet beginning and in retrospect a rather mundane introdution to such a deeply learned, fascinating literary voice - to outline the themes his book will espouse and discover pulsing throughtout the veins of our Revolutionary heroes. In no uncertain terms he makes the rather obvious, yet bold, claim that history as viewed then wasn't history at all; that what seemed certain to us, looking as we are through the pane of glass that is the last 200+ years, seemed more foreboding and improvised to them.
Following up this historical analysis is the book itself, seperated out over six vignettes of American history. It is these vignettes, Ellis says, that will cement to us all the true scope of the Revolution back then. Which is to say, there was no scope - except perhaps in Thomas Jefferson's mind. Well let me say, in no uncertain terms, that the vast rogue's gallery of crusty figures Ellis summons for his book prove his point and even more: they cement to us Ellis' talent as a historian of calm style and cool wit who turns past memories of hot days in a classroom into an exciting journey of surprising human depth.
He begins with the Hamilton-Burr duel. To those that don't know, it was a fatal contest of honor that resulted in Hamilton's death. The incident itself actually shares large portions of its screen time with other aspects of the showdown: Hamilton & Burr's respective political careers, their verbal war that lead to the gun battle, and the history of American dueling as a whole. These may seem odd puzzle pieces to fit together but they somehow are - in a fit of elegant writing that ties them all together by the image of that five-second clash (Hamilton's planned mis, Burr's un-planned hit). As historical dissections go, "The Duel" has more depth in its simple investigation than large portions of school-issued textbooks (plus, its fun to read!). Furthermore its the perfect opening act as it only hints at the discoveries to come: Jefferson's relationship to John Adams (a roller-coaster of a friendship), Washington's relationship to the public (a scarily eloof one), and Madison & Hamilton's relationships to the political scene (these two men could give Karl Rove a run for his money when it comes to brilliantly orchaestrated surges of political power) in addition to a few others.
Ellis launches into each of these new tales with relish and yet not losing a single drop of his cool demeanor and style. He sets up facts and fictions with straightforward no-nosense and his eventual conclusions (eluded to in the preface) are some tasty delights. It would be difficult for any writer, fiction or non, to match the divine experience of reading the twelve-year letterathon between Jefferson and Adams, a correspondence that started first as a reconcilliation following the party wars of the '90s and then evolved into a rumination on all the two had accomplished with the fledgling country. Their words speak for themselves, and Ellis lets them for the most part, but when the author does intrude it is only in the most elegant and un-intrusive of ways: to say with calm flourish that his points had been proven and his case won; that these weren't gods that planned our bloody uprsing, they were men of great ability and great flaws who were in the end capable of great humanity.
Finally though it isn't his separate stories that are the point, though they are arguably some of the more highly entertaining I've read, or even the understated thesis. No, the final point I think resides in the simple, easy, razor sharp rendering of Ellis' work; he has alchemized some of our greatest high school woes and boredoms into a supreme biography; a work of potent significance because it has done the impossible: it has grounded the Gods.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Unforgiven: B+
Cowboys, they are the stuff of mythology the world over. The nomadic animal herders. The constantly shifting living conditions (and the tacitly implied slightly-off mental framework one would require to live with them). And of course, the ever present fact that cowboys became "cowboys" only when they were armed...and quite freely willing to disperse their arms through the air. Such is the historically accurate Westerner. But lest we forget, I am writing predominantly about the movie cowboys and the westerns about them - that elegant form of brute sun-baked noir that romanticized and villified all images of the American West for then and forever.
Such goals may not have been at the forefront of Clint Eastwood's mind and yet they emerge repeatedly when watching what he was created with his final Western, Unforgiven. The smoothly cragged, defiantly flawed and yet utterly beautiful vistas of his cinematic landscape evoke John Wayne with aching precision and his very figure - here starring as William Munny, a barely reformed father/gunslinger - brings with it a smokey flavor of authenticity and skill. As movies in general go, Unforgiven stands out as one of the more gorgeous and textured; each camera shot capturing more and more of the majestic West.
His story, written with respectable rough eloquence by David Webb Peoples, is as simple as they come in the Western genre - retired gunslinger leaves said retirement for that quintessential One Last Gig - and yet is tempered by pleasurable clever tweaks by Peoples.
This latter facet of the film is a bittersweet one though, seeing as how it only ever eludes as depth without ever truly delivering. For the majority of the film there may linger a sense of serious debate (how, exactly, does a murdering gunslinger cope with the murderous West?) but the dramatic, and cheaply set-up, climax destroys any notion of moral ambiguity. Eastwood is in essence, both as the director and star, teasing us with morality without ever daring himself to be teased as well. And this knowledge almost singularly holds Unforgiven back from being a great movie.
For all of Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris' work as more wiley outcasts in Eastwood's pungently dangerous world, the true magnitude of the movie rests solely on our star's shoulders and the ugly truth is, those shoulders sag at crucial moments. I will never get over Munny's rapid transformation near the end as little more than a desparately needed plot device (to believe in it is to completely devalue any semblance of the movie's serious moral philosophies) and Eastwood's own talents as an actor need some serious work in terms of internalizing (Munny has only a spark of self-loathing when there should be a fire). And yet Unforgiven is boldly elegaic, surreally funny, and instantly engaging from opening paragraphy to final coda. If Clint felt he had but one Western left in him I'm happy it was this because this, more than most films of the genre, is what a Western should be.
Such goals may not have been at the forefront of Clint Eastwood's mind and yet they emerge repeatedly when watching what he was created with his final Western, Unforgiven. The smoothly cragged, defiantly flawed and yet utterly beautiful vistas of his cinematic landscape evoke John Wayne with aching precision and his very figure - here starring as William Munny, a barely reformed father/gunslinger - brings with it a smokey flavor of authenticity and skill. As movies in general go, Unforgiven stands out as one of the more gorgeous and textured; each camera shot capturing more and more of the majestic West.
His story, written with respectable rough eloquence by David Webb Peoples, is as simple as they come in the Western genre - retired gunslinger leaves said retirement for that quintessential One Last Gig - and yet is tempered by pleasurable clever tweaks by Peoples.
This latter facet of the film is a bittersweet one though, seeing as how it only ever eludes as depth without ever truly delivering. For the majority of the film there may linger a sense of serious debate (how, exactly, does a murdering gunslinger cope with the murderous West?) but the dramatic, and cheaply set-up, climax destroys any notion of moral ambiguity. Eastwood is in essence, both as the director and star, teasing us with morality without ever daring himself to be teased as well. And this knowledge almost singularly holds Unforgiven back from being a great movie.
For all of Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris' work as more wiley outcasts in Eastwood's pungently dangerous world, the true magnitude of the movie rests solely on our star's shoulders and the ugly truth is, those shoulders sag at crucial moments. I will never get over Munny's rapid transformation near the end as little more than a desparately needed plot device (to believe in it is to completely devalue any semblance of the movie's serious moral philosophies) and Eastwood's own talents as an actor need some serious work in terms of internalizing (Munny has only a spark of self-loathing when there should be a fire). And yet Unforgiven is boldly elegaic, surreally funny, and instantly engaging from opening paragraphy to final coda. If Clint felt he had but one Western left in him I'm happy it was this because this, more than most films of the genre, is what a Western should be.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Ratatouille: A-
The work of Pixar Animation Studios is legendary. An obvious statement, to be sure, but one worth noting for its inherent strain of irony; after all, this is a studio founded not even 20 years ago, and above all else it specializes in animation - once thought the sole realm of Disney musical theater. Yet Pixar's work speaks for itself. Not only that, it tends to speak fluidly, humorously, sweetly, and with an unmatched level of glimmering philosophical grace. As for their animation? To say that the plasticized sheen of Toy Story, the elastic slapstick of The Incredibles, or the murky phosphorescence of Finding Nemo is beautiful seems almost an insult - Pixar's skill with animation is trascendant. It is then the studios' skill with these two elements that have combined to form such lasting legacies in cinema (or, at least, legacies for a growing child) and it is a bright day indeed when an acknowledged master of the Pixar Studios steps out again to do a new movie. That master is Brad Bird and his latest, Ratatouille, floats in a saucy-sweet bubble of its own romantic Parisian design.
Admittedly it would be tough to make a movie about a rat (wait...you didn't know?), so kudos are deserved for writer-director Bird for crafting a such a lithe delectable fable around such an unseemly creature. But, is Remy (Patton Oswalt) such a bad guy? The answer by the end of the film is a rousing No! (as expected, such response is a foregone conclusion when bent to the ways of Pixar). Yet the answer itself causes some problems; or rather, the question to which it is answering looms like an undignified, irritating third party - that of true movie protagonist. See, Remy is such a sweet-souled foodie (he's impulsively chained to his brilliant taste in food) that it takes little more than seconds to forget he's a rat...and little more than seconds after that to forget him almost entirely. Some of the blame lies with Oswalt, as his voice, in failing to give Remy even a hint of deadpan irony (as per Tom Hanks in Toy Story) or willful personality (a la Owen Wilson in Cars) while some fault lies with Bird's script in making our rodent friend all friendly, quirky surfaces with rarely a sharp, relatable edge. There is though, shockingly enough, a seductive logic to Remy's characterization: his image as a lovable mini-chef, a democratized spirit of "Everyone Can Cook!" incarnate, fits almost seamlessly into the overall picture of a lovable mini-Paris; a gaslight dream for the eyes, mind, and heart.
If you have noticed that it's taken me longer than usual to sum up the movie's adventures, there is a good enough reason: Remy's experiences in a French kitchen with Linguini (Lou Romano) and Colette (Janeane Garofalo) are best left to enjoy first-hand and for the first time since the decidedly fast-paced activities of a restaurant make for such unexpectedly engaging fare. The director's potent skill with fast-paced movement scenes allow most of Ratatouille to take on the air of a screwball truffle - a lovingly glazed skewer on French cuisine - that also manages to be interspersed with dozens (dozens!) of delicious visual gags and tricks. Indeed, most of the wit of the movie resides in Bird's playful optical style and for the bulk of Ratatouille that stays in the kitchen he comes close to reaching his previous high, the incredible The Incredibles.
For the inevitable parts of the movie that stray outside the cooking arena there are still satisfactory treats to savor - food critic Anton Ego (the indespensible Peter O'Toole) is a personal fave - but I couldn't help but notice that some critical elements fall alittle short; there are unavoidable fissures in Bird's sub-plots here that were missing from his previous work, namely Colette's character and Remy's dilemna of being who he is (how I wish for once that there exist a great movie about someone trying to be different than who they "are"...and no, I do not mean Transamerica).
It would be wantonly cruel though to lead anyone into believing that Ratatouille is not a delightful piece of cinema. Most of the attending audience (including me) will laugh, will cry, and will let their eyes grow big at the flat-out gorgeous invention that is the soft-hues daydream landscape of this animated Paris. Some people would be mostly correct in alledging that all of Pixar's work revolves around the search for (or incorrigible problem of) having an identity. But if one is likely too levy cries of banality in that then they will just as easily be denied by the simple fact of the sheer depth of vision, sheer ecstasy in creative, funny, emotional power that is each and every one of Pixar's films - Ratatouille included.
Admittedly it would be tough to make a movie about a rat (wait...you didn't know?), so kudos are deserved for writer-director Bird for crafting a such a lithe delectable fable around such an unseemly creature. But, is Remy (Patton Oswalt) such a bad guy? The answer by the end of the film is a rousing No! (as expected, such response is a foregone conclusion when bent to the ways of Pixar). Yet the answer itself causes some problems; or rather, the question to which it is answering looms like an undignified, irritating third party - that of true movie protagonist. See, Remy is such a sweet-souled foodie (he's impulsively chained to his brilliant taste in food) that it takes little more than seconds to forget he's a rat...and little more than seconds after that to forget him almost entirely. Some of the blame lies with Oswalt, as his voice, in failing to give Remy even a hint of deadpan irony (as per Tom Hanks in Toy Story) or willful personality (a la Owen Wilson in Cars) while some fault lies with Bird's script in making our rodent friend all friendly, quirky surfaces with rarely a sharp, relatable edge. There is though, shockingly enough, a seductive logic to Remy's characterization: his image as a lovable mini-chef, a democratized spirit of "Everyone Can Cook!" incarnate, fits almost seamlessly into the overall picture of a lovable mini-Paris; a gaslight dream for the eyes, mind, and heart.
If you have noticed that it's taken me longer than usual to sum up the movie's adventures, there is a good enough reason: Remy's experiences in a French kitchen with Linguini (Lou Romano) and Colette (Janeane Garofalo) are best left to enjoy first-hand and for the first time since the decidedly fast-paced activities of a restaurant make for such unexpectedly engaging fare. The director's potent skill with fast-paced movement scenes allow most of Ratatouille to take on the air of a screwball truffle - a lovingly glazed skewer on French cuisine - that also manages to be interspersed with dozens (dozens!) of delicious visual gags and tricks. Indeed, most of the wit of the movie resides in Bird's playful optical style and for the bulk of Ratatouille that stays in the kitchen he comes close to reaching his previous high, the incredible The Incredibles.
For the inevitable parts of the movie that stray outside the cooking arena there are still satisfactory treats to savor - food critic Anton Ego (the indespensible Peter O'Toole) is a personal fave - but I couldn't help but notice that some critical elements fall alittle short; there are unavoidable fissures in Bird's sub-plots here that were missing from his previous work, namely Colette's character and Remy's dilemna of being who he is (how I wish for once that there exist a great movie about someone trying to be different than who they "are"...and no, I do not mean Transamerica).
It would be wantonly cruel though to lead anyone into believing that Ratatouille is not a delightful piece of cinema. Most of the attending audience (including me) will laugh, will cry, and will let their eyes grow big at the flat-out gorgeous invention that is the soft-hues daydream landscape of this animated Paris. Some people would be mostly correct in alledging that all of Pixar's work revolves around the search for (or incorrigible problem of) having an identity. But if one is likely too levy cries of banality in that then they will just as easily be denied by the simple fact of the sheer depth of vision, sheer ecstasy in creative, funny, emotional power that is each and every one of Pixar's films - Ratatouille included.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Sicko: A
There are few words to describe how I felt after watching Sicko. I suppose "upset" or "depreseed" comes close but the unique blend of seething moralist outrage that documentarian Michael Moore conjures is almost beyond description. It left me feeling sick, tired, and above all, irate. In his devious, scathing expose Moore deconstructs the healthcare industry with something akin to mainstream brilliance; he blends his media footage into a cocktail that is just plain deadly...serious.
Sicko begins with the usual horror stories - in this case, a husband and wife driven into their childrens' basement due to bankruptcy-inducing medical bills - and it wastes no time in assembling them into a shape vaguely relating to the dark humor of Bowling for Columbine (Moore's only other great film) while losing none of the factoidal relevance of Fahrenheit 9/11. Not even 30 minutes in and Sicko has taken on the affecting portrait of a screwball attack on American medicine; something bitingly sad as well as surprisingly humorous. It is from these mildly tame roots that Moore springs forth on a wicked offensive - deconstructing medical myths at nearly every turn while managing to turn a self-refracting lens on himself and the American media in the process.
He explores the roots of the U.S. "HMO" (Nixon had a hand in it cerca 1971). He examines the ever-shifting, ever-conflicting, ever satirically absurd regulations for approval that said HMO's use (apparently you need to be somewhere between 5-6 feet and 130-170 pounds). He takes a look at the deadly denial claims that are an insurance company's bread & butter as well as a minor yet tragic side-glance into the people that make these denials. From these investigations he concludes, playing the part of the ever ignorant "American", that socialized medicine must be doing something right...and so he heads to find out.
His explorations into the universal health systems of 99.9% of the western world make up a vast majority of Sicko and yet what leaves you with a feeling of momentous disgust - at the industry, at the government, at the lobbyists - is Moore's persistent argument for change and discovery. What makes his latest film such a good one is that he melds his curiousity with his deft visual humor into something that elevates that argument into art.
The final segments of his documentary explore exactly what it means to suffer at the hands of America; to truly suffer, inexplicably and unexpectedly. His footage, of interviews and security camera tapes, is downright tear-jerking and something worthy of infinite respect, both for Moore as a filmmaker and for the people on whom he turned his camera. After all, who among us hasn't been scared silly by the specter of "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE"? Who among us hasn't simply shaken our heads at the plight of the un-insured millions and kept right on walking? In his incendiary, crafty, expansively compassion way Moore dares us to stop what we are doing and to see for once (in a mosaic of bold emotional power) the lies of the HMO's, the lies of the pundits and politicos, and finally, just to see the light (universal coverage) that we as a country have let lie dark (privatized insurance) for far too long.
Sicko begins with the usual horror stories - in this case, a husband and wife driven into their childrens' basement due to bankruptcy-inducing medical bills - and it wastes no time in assembling them into a shape vaguely relating to the dark humor of Bowling for Columbine (Moore's only other great film) while losing none of the factoidal relevance of Fahrenheit 9/11. Not even 30 minutes in and Sicko has taken on the affecting portrait of a screwball attack on American medicine; something bitingly sad as well as surprisingly humorous. It is from these mildly tame roots that Moore springs forth on a wicked offensive - deconstructing medical myths at nearly every turn while managing to turn a self-refracting lens on himself and the American media in the process.
He explores the roots of the U.S. "HMO" (Nixon had a hand in it cerca 1971). He examines the ever-shifting, ever-conflicting, ever satirically absurd regulations for approval that said HMO's use (apparently you need to be somewhere between 5-6 feet and 130-170 pounds). He takes a look at the deadly denial claims that are an insurance company's bread & butter as well as a minor yet tragic side-glance into the people that make these denials. From these investigations he concludes, playing the part of the ever ignorant "American", that socialized medicine must be doing something right...and so he heads to find out.
His explorations into the universal health systems of 99.9% of the western world make up a vast majority of Sicko and yet what leaves you with a feeling of momentous disgust - at the industry, at the government, at the lobbyists - is Moore's persistent argument for change and discovery. What makes his latest film such a good one is that he melds his curiousity with his deft visual humor into something that elevates that argument into art.
The final segments of his documentary explore exactly what it means to suffer at the hands of America; to truly suffer, inexplicably and unexpectedly. His footage, of interviews and security camera tapes, is downright tear-jerking and something worthy of infinite respect, both for Moore as a filmmaker and for the people on whom he turned his camera. After all, who among us hasn't been scared silly by the specter of "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE"? Who among us hasn't simply shaken our heads at the plight of the un-insured millions and kept right on walking? In his incendiary, crafty, expansively compassion way Moore dares us to stop what we are doing and to see for once (in a mosaic of bold emotional power) the lies of the HMO's, the lies of the pundits and politicos, and finally, just to see the light (universal coverage) that we as a country have let lie dark (privatized insurance) for far too long.
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