I can't stop thinking about Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Debut author Marisha Pessl's dense study of murder, adultery, shadowy organizations, and high school clique-politics is quite the unforgettable ride - witty, showy, thrilling, and dark. Its plot is an admittedly far-flung tale but it has a superb anchor in Blue van Meer, the bookish main character. Add to that Pessl's shockingly abundant talent as a writer and what you get is a rare treat; a hefty novel imagined with such lighter-than-air exuberance that its every twist & turn is a new delight, a new treasure, to be discovered in these 500-pages.
Topics starts as Blue recounts to us the time she spent at St. Gallaway's, a glamorous private school, how she came to be there, and what transpired after she arrived. She came in a blue Volvo with her dad, a roving idealist-academic, and set-up preparing to waste away her senior year as any other: being the smartest kid in the room that no one will talk to. Her plans are thwarted though when she meets Hannah Schneider, a teacher at St. Gallaway's, and the catty-charismatic circle of students that surround her. The circle, known as the "Bluebloods", is an uber-exclusive cult of celebrity at the school that Blue, strangely enough, is quickly drawn into.
At their center, the magnetic Hannah - a noir dame whose characterization has an exotic, illustrious appeal - and as the months wear on Blue finds herself one of them and consequently, a school celebrity. Of course the ranks she joins are not quite pleseant company; Jade, the vixon-diva, Charles, the extraordinarily handsome romantic, Nigel, the bespectacled teen pulsing with pathos, Milton, the beefy Southerner, and Leulah, the Rapunzelesque wallflower, each prove themselves to be snarky coiles of acidity and cynicism and yet their charms are immediate - to Blue and the reader.
Yet why is Hannah, a forty-something teacher, socializing with teenagers (no matter how glamorous she may be)? Better still, why do people keep dying around her? And why is it that in occasionally gloomy moods Hannah will hint at dark secrets, a dark past? These are just some of the mysteries that pull our hero inexorably into a web spanning many countries and many years...or maybe not. The sheer roccoco ecstacy with which Pessl piles on the questions - faux confessions here, a red herring there - is in itself a joy but its even better to watch her eyeing the mess she has created at the end of the book, an unfortunate pile-up of too much ??? and not enough !!!, and then with minimum flair, clean it all up in an impossibly logical ribbon with just a hint of red (for flair).
As you can tell, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is an over-stuffed endeavor, filled with too many Big Ideas and not enough Big Answers. And yet, working outside of the mystery mold and settling nicely into coming-of-age stream-of-conscious, the novel is a sparkling success; Blue's introspective wit burns holes in the pages its so wicked smart. And Marisha Pessl's sure-footed conclusion is in itself a small-scale satisfactory feast. Sure the Bluebloods fall occasionally into un-characterized limbo and the sudden shifting gears of the third act will give most readers whip-lash, but there lies a winning (and audacious) seduction at the core of Special Topics in Calamity Physics that promises everything from savage school staff to sudden love scenes, and it delivers...mostly.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Any Given Sunday: B
Any Given Sunday starts off very well. In fact, orchaestrated as it is to be an opera of sound and movement by director Oliver Stone, Any Given Sunday starts off with a wallop; a collosal football game photographed with schizophrenic gaudy delirium for nearly thirty minutes. It is a scene-stealer of a set piece, this football game, and it serves its purpose well...to an extent. Though it sets up the characters - Miami Sharks team coach Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), team owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), QB Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid), third-stringer QB Willie Beamen (Jamie Foxx) - and atmosphere of the sport with a hypnotic confidence and energy, it is a misleading opener. Because the sad fact is that from the minute that starting game winds down, so too does the movie. Any Given Sunday is a promising production, with a boatload of top-tier names on board, that wallows and ultimately sinks into an ingratiating pool of its own pontificating.
It promises to be a behind-the-scenes look at professional football, fine. And to that end it succeeds. Of course with a movie flavored so overtly cynical as this one, its hard not to suceed at an enterprise such as looking "behind-the-scenes", by which of course I mean skewering a national export with something wavering between sincerity and sarcasm.
There is an unintentional side-effect to being so self-righteously pompous though. The negatives, you see, of decrying every character on screen with a toxic cynicism are that in doing so, you deprive yourself - and the audience - of a forceful center of gravity on which to anchor the movie. Even more, there is left a gaping hole of emotion right next to that oh-so-recently vacated "Star of the Show" that should have been filled from the get-go with say...I don't know...Al Pacino? Dennis Quaid? Jim Brown?
The irony of Any Given Sunday is that, in the end, it is just as much of an "inspirational sport's film" as it desparately wants to be a stringent docu-drama of locker room cat fights. What someone failed to tell Stone and his co-writer John Logan, is that you really should pick: vanilla or chocolate, boxers or briefs, docu-drama or dramatic inspiration. So either someone failed to communicate this sacred advice to the director, or (the more likely and distressing scenario) he got so tied up in his moralist speechifying that he forgot it completely. The result? Not only then is that left out in the cold, but so too is the audience.
Sure there are some nice performances - no one will ever say that Pacino can't deliver a rousing monologue - and Stone's patented split-second splice-crazy media-distillation that he calls directing is a visually, and occasionally emotionally, resonant head-trip. But the fact remains that at the end of the day, or as the movie puts it "on any given Sunday", this movie will go down as Oliver Stone's gloss on the Great Big Sports Film; a movie that looked tantilizingly supreme but ultimately failed at its most fundamental level: its heart. Given the various last-second moral awakenings and inspiring victories that propel the climactic, and extremely well-executed, final game it makes me almost long for a more clear cut, clear eyed film; something that reaches for the stars and achieves them, for no matter how short a time, instead of Any Given Sunday, a Good Film that should have been a Great Film but faltered, fell, and landed squarely into a dissapointing shade of gray.
It promises to be a behind-the-scenes look at professional football, fine. And to that end it succeeds. Of course with a movie flavored so overtly cynical as this one, its hard not to suceed at an enterprise such as looking "behind-the-scenes", by which of course I mean skewering a national export with something wavering between sincerity and sarcasm.
There is an unintentional side-effect to being so self-righteously pompous though. The negatives, you see, of decrying every character on screen with a toxic cynicism are that in doing so, you deprive yourself - and the audience - of a forceful center of gravity on which to anchor the movie. Even more, there is left a gaping hole of emotion right next to that oh-so-recently vacated "Star of the Show" that should have been filled from the get-go with say...I don't know...Al Pacino? Dennis Quaid? Jim Brown?
The irony of Any Given Sunday is that, in the end, it is just as much of an "inspirational sport's film" as it desparately wants to be a stringent docu-drama of locker room cat fights. What someone failed to tell Stone and his co-writer John Logan, is that you really should pick: vanilla or chocolate, boxers or briefs, docu-drama or dramatic inspiration. So either someone failed to communicate this sacred advice to the director, or (the more likely and distressing scenario) he got so tied up in his moralist speechifying that he forgot it completely. The result? Not only then is that left out in the cold, but so too is the audience.
Sure there are some nice performances - no one will ever say that Pacino can't deliver a rousing monologue - and Stone's patented split-second splice-crazy media-distillation that he calls directing is a visually, and occasionally emotionally, resonant head-trip. But the fact remains that at the end of the day, or as the movie puts it "on any given Sunday", this movie will go down as Oliver Stone's gloss on the Great Big Sports Film; a movie that looked tantilizingly supreme but ultimately failed at its most fundamental level: its heart. Given the various last-second moral awakenings and inspiring victories that propel the climactic, and extremely well-executed, final game it makes me almost long for a more clear cut, clear eyed film; something that reaches for the stars and achieves them, for no matter how short a time, instead of Any Given Sunday, a Good Film that should have been a Great Film but faltered, fell, and landed squarely into a dissapointing shade of gray.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Dick: A
Dick, writer-director Andrew Fleming's delectable truffle of a political satire, is one giddily inventive piece of comedic excellence. Though on its surface (two gleaming young babes, several well-known 70's pop hits) it may seem all carb-lite nothing, Dick inverts the mother of all scandals - Watergate - with a lovable quicksilver daffiness bordering very near intelligence. It is a screwy comedy of coincidence played off with such a delicate touch that it does the near impossible: it makes Nixon funny.
At the center of Dick are two bubbly teens, Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), who together have more bouncy energy and pep than most entire casts. Together they stumble into various Nixon wrong-doings (they discover the Watergate burglarly mid-way through as well as a torn piece of the CREEP pay-off list), supplied to them via several cheerfully ridiculous scenarios. Since they are witnesses, the two girls get whisked up to the Big Man himself, President Nixon (Dan Hedaya) and soon fall into his good graces. Such a spot in his good favor allows them to fall into a wide-range of fun adventures, be it baking "special" cookies for the prez or singing into his secret tape recorder, but they are destined as much as the rest of the nation to discover Richard "Dick" Nixon's true nature, and so they do. What a delightful prank that these two air-heads start out as the audience's cheery rose-colored glasses and end up its slowly awakening moralist soul.
Their bid for revenge brings them into contact with Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch) and the quartet's attempts at revealing the corrupt dealings of the White House are but one attraction in this wicked carnival of satire. Look closely enough and you'll see Harry Shearer go flying by in one of his hilarious cameos. Oh and look, it's Ana Gasteyer in a knock-out role as Nixon's secretary!
In addition, Saul Rubinek and Dave Foley both pop up as yet more administartion cronies who pack a vivid comedic wallop. But so then are they just like the rest of the film: a fluffy hybrid of tacky 70's trash and 90's sassy-bright filmmaking that comes complete with a secret - Dick has a sense of humor that bites with a howl-inducing CRUNCH.
At the center of Dick are two bubbly teens, Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), who together have more bouncy energy and pep than most entire casts. Together they stumble into various Nixon wrong-doings (they discover the Watergate burglarly mid-way through as well as a torn piece of the CREEP pay-off list), supplied to them via several cheerfully ridiculous scenarios. Since they are witnesses, the two girls get whisked up to the Big Man himself, President Nixon (Dan Hedaya) and soon fall into his good graces. Such a spot in his good favor allows them to fall into a wide-range of fun adventures, be it baking "special" cookies for the prez or singing into his secret tape recorder, but they are destined as much as the rest of the nation to discover Richard "Dick" Nixon's true nature, and so they do. What a delightful prank that these two air-heads start out as the audience's cheery rose-colored glasses and end up its slowly awakening moralist soul.
Their bid for revenge brings them into contact with Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch) and the quartet's attempts at revealing the corrupt dealings of the White House are but one attraction in this wicked carnival of satire. Look closely enough and you'll see Harry Shearer go flying by in one of his hilarious cameos. Oh and look, it's Ana Gasteyer in a knock-out role as Nixon's secretary!
In addition, Saul Rubinek and Dave Foley both pop up as yet more administartion cronies who pack a vivid comedic wallop. But so then are they just like the rest of the film: a fluffy hybrid of tacky 70's trash and 90's sassy-bright filmmaking that comes complete with a secret - Dick has a sense of humor that bites with a howl-inducing CRUNCH.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Boys Don't Cry: A
Boys Don't Cry is a wonder of filmmaking. It is a true-life romance with Hilary Swank as its show-stopping soul. It is a whirling showcase for writer-director Kimberly Pierce's, here making her debut film, immense talent. And finally it is simply a plain-spoken story told with naturalistic emotional beauty. There is something implicitly unique to Boys Don't Cry, something that sticks with you long after the lights have gone up, that allows it to transcend the boundaries of "tragedy" or "bio-pic" and rise to become, simply, a dazzling film.
Its singular startling gift is in its emotional intensity, its capacity to lyricize the most sacred of
emotions without once over-blowing them. It is a testament to the school of thought that speaking about the truest of things - in this case that ever-constant search for love - is usually always best. There are no cleverly structured plot-pieces, nor no momentum-stopping soliloquies. There is simply a person perched in an Eden of their own discovery from which they are destined to fall. The way with which Pierce documents this, in a shocking feat of near verite camera-work, will steal your breath away.
The film starts with Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank) stripping down, her hair and her clothes, into a rougher and cleaner look - into the look of a boy. She heads out early to a local hang-out and easily swoons the girls. By the time she has made physical contact with them however she is no longer Teena Brandon, she is Brandon Teena - a roughneck twenty-something who eventually makes his way to Falls City, Nebraska where the "she" becomes, for all intents and purposes, a "he".
Brandon falls into a roughly hewn band of blue-collars. There are John (Peter Sarsgaard), Tom (Brendan Sexton III), Candice (Alicia Goranson) and Candice's friend Lana (Chloe Sevigny). Their merry band whittle their hours away drinking, rough-housing, and trying - as all small-town residents do - to inflate their own existence...or to escape it. It is a ironic fact that Brandon - a person for whom escape has already been achieved - comes to hang around such isolated souls but when they all get together, in say Lana's living room or around the local water tower, their eccentric charms are hard to resist. Thus Brandon sticks around with these people; taking his cues of masculinity from John and quickly becoming smitten with Lana. Soon enough he is one of the "family".
Happy as he is though, in a newly discovered world of bliss, Brandon's love affair - with Lana, with her family, with her friends, with his own new identity - cannot last. The minute he has achieved his greatest moment in Falls City, all I will say is that the police and a healthy dose of fog are involved, is the exact moment when everything starts falling apart. The end result is not pretty.
To anyone who read the news in 1993, the year the actual Teena Brandon suffered her sad fate, the tragic climax will come as no surprise. The real surprise is the amount of emotional clarity that is brought into handling the material, as well as the maturity.
Chloe Sevigny is a revelation as Lana and her sad, quiet eyes practically gather the audience into collective empathy. And Hilary Swank works with such awe-inspiring skill as to finally burst forth from that alien label "sexual identity crisis" and simply become, in all its heartbreaking glory, a human being. Still it is Kimberly Pierce who is the true star of the show. She has worked a true miracle with Boys Don't Cry: she leaps daintily over cliches, dodges melodrama effortlessly, and sails magnificently into the land of great film with a purity and force that is in of itself a rewarding experience to watch.
Its singular startling gift is in its emotional intensity, its capacity to lyricize the most sacred of
emotions without once over-blowing them. It is a testament to the school of thought that speaking about the truest of things - in this case that ever-constant search for love - is usually always best. There are no cleverly structured plot-pieces, nor no momentum-stopping soliloquies. There is simply a person perched in an Eden of their own discovery from which they are destined to fall. The way with which Pierce documents this, in a shocking feat of near verite camera-work, will steal your breath away.
The film starts with Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank) stripping down, her hair and her clothes, into a rougher and cleaner look - into the look of a boy. She heads out early to a local hang-out and easily swoons the girls. By the time she has made physical contact with them however she is no longer Teena Brandon, she is Brandon Teena - a roughneck twenty-something who eventually makes his way to Falls City, Nebraska where the "she" becomes, for all intents and purposes, a "he".
Brandon falls into a roughly hewn band of blue-collars. There are John (Peter Sarsgaard), Tom (Brendan Sexton III), Candice (Alicia Goranson) and Candice's friend Lana (Chloe Sevigny). Their merry band whittle their hours away drinking, rough-housing, and trying - as all small-town residents do - to inflate their own existence...or to escape it. It is a ironic fact that Brandon - a person for whom escape has already been achieved - comes to hang around such isolated souls but when they all get together, in say Lana's living room or around the local water tower, their eccentric charms are hard to resist. Thus Brandon sticks around with these people; taking his cues of masculinity from John and quickly becoming smitten with Lana. Soon enough he is one of the "family".
Happy as he is though, in a newly discovered world of bliss, Brandon's love affair - with Lana, with her family, with her friends, with his own new identity - cannot last. The minute he has achieved his greatest moment in Falls City, all I will say is that the police and a healthy dose of fog are involved, is the exact moment when everything starts falling apart. The end result is not pretty.
To anyone who read the news in 1993, the year the actual Teena Brandon suffered her sad fate, the tragic climax will come as no surprise. The real surprise is the amount of emotional clarity that is brought into handling the material, as well as the maturity.
Chloe Sevigny is a revelation as Lana and her sad, quiet eyes practically gather the audience into collective empathy. And Hilary Swank works with such awe-inspiring skill as to finally burst forth from that alien label "sexual identity crisis" and simply become, in all its heartbreaking glory, a human being. Still it is Kimberly Pierce who is the true star of the show. She has worked a true miracle with Boys Don't Cry: she leaps daintily over cliches, dodges melodrama effortlessly, and sails magnificently into the land of great film with a purity and force that is in of itself a rewarding experience to watch.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Collateral: A-
Michael Mann seriously loves the pumping and grinding of a good dance scene. It was there in the opening scene of last year's midnight-cool Miami Vice as well as the opening shots of Ali. In Collateral, Mann's 2004 midnight-cooler thriller, he doesn't dissapoint; the director sets a scene of such cleverly decadent dance-club noise that it'll leave you in a mile-high state of excitement. The scene itself - in which Vincent (Tom Cruise), a contract killer who has hired Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around all night to his various "stops", goes racing through a packed club to take out his next victim - isn't seemingly that special. It features no gigantic explosions and there isn't a cheeky Bruce Willis line within a mile of the place and yet the action on screen is tossed-of with the perfect gesture: something half-way between nonsense and dread, insanity and thrills.
Such is the blue-print for the entire movie; the picture snakes along with terse, malevolent energy until suddenly...bam! bullets, blood, and the adrenaline levels go flying. As action-thrillers go, I'd say that's a pretty potent formula and Tom Cruise, his steely lethal sarcasms in full regale, makes the perfect bruise-black center for it.
Strangely enough though the film starts not with a bang, but with a whimper; or rather, instead of some gun shots, there are red lights. Everything starts with Max, a "temporary cab driver", going about his day-job...or rather, night-job. You see, Max prefers the late hours of Los Angeles to the scorching heat. It is this preference that leads him to pick up two passengers: Vincent and Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), both of whom serve as vital plot markers but, more importantly, as two more jagged, true-talking characters in the fast-flying world envisioned by writer Stuart Beattie.
Though I have spoiled, in some way or another, a major turn in the film's twisty propulsive narrative I have said very little about the events that actually transpire in the film. There is little to say without ruining for each viewer the unique experience of watching Michael Mann work his craft - the hard-boiled, fragmentary, poetic dialogue, the moody camera work, the creeping scores. Mann is in such control of his craft that in each scene, from those early flitatious moments to the cat-and-mouse show-downs of the last frames, Collateral sails along to a truly mesmerizing beat; so much so in fact that I forgot I should be critiquing the film and simply sat watching, unable to take my eyes away.
I get the nattering feeling that the entire emotional core of the movie lies in Vincent but if that is the price I have to pay to be privy to the enjoyably off-kilter chemistry of Foxx and Crusie, so be it. The two of them - captor and captive, good guy and bad guy, straight-laced and off-the-handle - make up the majority of Collateral and are together its thrilling center of off-balance gravity. I acknowledge that there are some thinly-veiled contrivances involved in such an obvious plot idea ("the cabbie and the assasin went into a bar...") but if the result is such as this, a movie that moves as calmly and cooly as the L.A. night air, then who am I to complain?
Such is the blue-print for the entire movie; the picture snakes along with terse, malevolent energy until suddenly...bam! bullets, blood, and the adrenaline levels go flying. As action-thrillers go, I'd say that's a pretty potent formula and Tom Cruise, his steely lethal sarcasms in full regale, makes the perfect bruise-black center for it.
Strangely enough though the film starts not with a bang, but with a whimper; or rather, instead of some gun shots, there are red lights. Everything starts with Max, a "temporary cab driver", going about his day-job...or rather, night-job. You see, Max prefers the late hours of Los Angeles to the scorching heat. It is this preference that leads him to pick up two passengers: Vincent and Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), both of whom serve as vital plot markers but, more importantly, as two more jagged, true-talking characters in the fast-flying world envisioned by writer Stuart Beattie.
Though I have spoiled, in some way or another, a major turn in the film's twisty propulsive narrative I have said very little about the events that actually transpire in the film. There is little to say without ruining for each viewer the unique experience of watching Michael Mann work his craft - the hard-boiled, fragmentary, poetic dialogue, the moody camera work, the creeping scores. Mann is in such control of his craft that in each scene, from those early flitatious moments to the cat-and-mouse show-downs of the last frames, Collateral sails along to a truly mesmerizing beat; so much so in fact that I forgot I should be critiquing the film and simply sat watching, unable to take my eyes away.
I get the nattering feeling that the entire emotional core of the movie lies in Vincent but if that is the price I have to pay to be privy to the enjoyably off-kilter chemistry of Foxx and Crusie, so be it. The two of them - captor and captive, good guy and bad guy, straight-laced and off-the-handle - make up the majority of Collateral and are together its thrilling center of off-balance gravity. I acknowledge that there are some thinly-veiled contrivances involved in such an obvious plot idea ("the cabbie and the assasin went into a bar...") but if the result is such as this, a movie that moves as calmly and cooly as the L.A. night air, then who am I to complain?
Ocean's Thirteen: B+
Who knew there were actually parts of Ocean's Twelve worth salvaging? I certainly didn't. Imagine my surprise then to find that here, in Ocean's Thirteen, there are more than a few similarities between it and its predecessor. Imagine still how I felt when I discovered that the parts that were kept, saved really from celluloid hell, were in fact some of the worst of the franchise; clear as day in Ocean's Thirteen are the egregious plot holes and an impermeable air of self-satisfaction. Still, nearly half-way through my latest Ocean's viewing experience something clicked: this latest foray of Soderbergh & Gang is indeed smug, but it is also a sparkling and smarmy contraption - something its predecessor definitely wasn't.
The most prominent thing going for the movie is its reinvigorating return to the slick plot formula of the first in this series of three: take someone's money (that someone preferably being a very very bad man) and in the process make that person very very mad. An addendum to that, one known but never spoken of course, is to always look great (and suave and chill under pressure) while doing it. To these ends Ocean's Thirteen does very well. The big name stars - Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Pacino - still ooze irresistible appeal and as they go tromping around the glitzy sin-playground that is a Vegas casino, their fey put-ons in full storm, the audience collectively sighs: this is the film Ocean's Twelve should have been.
The set-up this time? Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his crew are out to out-fox Willie Bank (Al Pacino) after he screwed Reuben (Elliot Gould). They have devised a variety of means of accomplishing this - some are killer smooth in their simplicity while others are almost cruelly witty in their devilish effect - but their real goal, indeed the true goal of all three films, is to assure themselves that their friendships are merely the extension of their thievish tendencies...or vice-versa. You see, male-male camraderie is something these men's men shy away from and yet in that very act, accomplish. Oh the hilarity! Oh the subtle ironic commentary! Oh oh oh!
So sure the film is alittle heavy-handed in its jokes and its one-liners lack the impossibly cool zing! of the original's, but Ocean's Thirteen is still one nicely enjoyable romp; a sly comedy of metrosexual manners. The comedy however does fail. Luckily the cast never does.
After all these years George Clooney still has that killer twinkle of personality while Brad Pitt, doing a riff on the cold-headed right-hand man, proves at last he is one versatile - and heck, talented - actor and Matt Damon tosses off his lines with the nervy twitch of an older Seth Cohen...which of course is a good thing. Around all of this action, director Steven Soderbergh's camera zooms. Sometimes in casual grand swoop, others in grainy hand-held intimacy. What effect on the action does this have? As always, Soderbergh's style gives the audience a heightened connection with the stuff going down on screen.
Ocean's Thirteen is a leaden production at times and poorly-paced at others but it has re-found its spark, its saucy smirk of sly smarts, that once made these movies such a great time (credit is due here, I think, to writers Brian Koppelman & David Levien). It isn't high art, or even really a very good movie, but in its jazzy, elegant, and stylish rhythms it is one helluva good time.
The most prominent thing going for the movie is its reinvigorating return to the slick plot formula of the first in this series of three: take someone's money (that someone preferably being a very very bad man) and in the process make that person very very mad. An addendum to that, one known but never spoken of course, is to always look great (and suave and chill under pressure) while doing it. To these ends Ocean's Thirteen does very well. The big name stars - Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Pacino - still ooze irresistible appeal and as they go tromping around the glitzy sin-playground that is a Vegas casino, their fey put-ons in full storm, the audience collectively sighs: this is the film Ocean's Twelve should have been.
The set-up this time? Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his crew are out to out-fox Willie Bank (Al Pacino) after he screwed Reuben (Elliot Gould). They have devised a variety of means of accomplishing this - some are killer smooth in their simplicity while others are almost cruelly witty in their devilish effect - but their real goal, indeed the true goal of all three films, is to assure themselves that their friendships are merely the extension of their thievish tendencies...or vice-versa. You see, male-male camraderie is something these men's men shy away from and yet in that very act, accomplish. Oh the hilarity! Oh the subtle ironic commentary! Oh oh oh!
So sure the film is alittle heavy-handed in its jokes and its one-liners lack the impossibly cool zing! of the original's, but Ocean's Thirteen is still one nicely enjoyable romp; a sly comedy of metrosexual manners. The comedy however does fail. Luckily the cast never does.
After all these years George Clooney still has that killer twinkle of personality while Brad Pitt, doing a riff on the cold-headed right-hand man, proves at last he is one versatile - and heck, talented - actor and Matt Damon tosses off his lines with the nervy twitch of an older Seth Cohen...which of course is a good thing. Around all of this action, director Steven Soderbergh's camera zooms. Sometimes in casual grand swoop, others in grainy hand-held intimacy. What effect on the action does this have? As always, Soderbergh's style gives the audience a heightened connection with the stuff going down on screen.
Ocean's Thirteen is a leaden production at times and poorly-paced at others but it has re-found its spark, its saucy smirk of sly smarts, that once made these movies such a great time (credit is due here, I think, to writers Brian Koppelman & David Levien). It isn't high art, or even really a very good movie, but in its jazzy, elegant, and stylish rhythms it is one helluva good time.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Knocked Up: A
Knocked Up may be, minute-by-minute and scene-for-scene, one of the funniest films of the last decade. The characters are sharp, the set pieces pop, and the punchlines practically explode. Funny as it is, Knocked Up also is a certifiable great movie. "Why?" you might ask; what makes a fairy-book tale about one bong-loving schlub, Ben (Seth Rogen), getting one career-minded beaut, Alison (Katherine Heigl), pregnant so fresh, funny, and great? The answer lies in one man: Judd Apatow.
He of previous Virgin fame, Judd Apatow has long been renowned for mixing to great effect hilarity and heart. Each of his stories - be it Freaks & Geeks, Undeclared, or The 40-Year-Old Virgin - is propelled in equal amounts by his comedy and his sentiment. What has set him apart though (instead of say, making the next Big Daddy) is the way he has with his films and his actors, coaxing out kernels of honesty that are difficult to fake. Here in Knocked Up he about pulls every little truth there is to see about pregnancy in all of its forms (from the beginning to the very very end).
But alas I wax to long about the man behind the movie, when in fact that movie is just as pleasurable to witness as it is to see Apatow's skills at work. Ben Stone spends his day building an internet database to showcase celebrity nudity in films. Alison spends her days on-camera at E! News. One night - booze is involved here people - the two cross paths and have sex. Eight weeks later, Alison is pregnant. Now the fun starts.
Studious as it may be in the first few minutes, Knocked Up is bust-out-loud funny almost from the word "go". Watching Alison and Ben try and work their way through a delicate situation - trying, really, to fall in love - is an experience not to be missed: sublime and satirical. Equally sublime and satirical is the amount of time the cameras spend on Alison's sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and her own marriage to Pete (Paul Rudd) and their two daughters. Without losing a single laugh, a mighty tricky feat if I say so myself, Apatow manages to sharply observe seeming domestic "bliss" (it helps too that Rudd and Mann pull out such killer performances).
Rogen and Heigl make for a deliciously entertaining screen couple, both the other's "opposite", and the way each noodles around the idea of happiness and a child is both subtly, pricelessly comic and powerfully real. The plot turns on sharp erudite points (Alison's hormones, Ben's bong-loving) and it never veers off that unique course all its own. Sure the humor can be extraordinarily dirty (get used to the word "vagina") but don't be afraid; for those that have seen Virgin, this is more of the same...only better. And for those that have never witnessed a near comic genius at work, come now. Judd Apatow and his cast - and comedy as a whole - don't get much better.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Waitress: A
Waitress, a wry fable about pie-making in Dixie, is bursting with flavor. Headlined, in a divine performance, by Keri Russell the film is a cornball comedy layered atop sharp sadness. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, an actress-turned-filmmaker, Waitress may require some getting used to - its innocuous sitcom-y rhythms hit you from almost the first frame - but it is such a brazen mixture of laughter, tears, heartache, and triumph that to indulge in it is to indulge in great cinema.
Jenna (Keri Russell) works all day crafting her heart's delight: pies; she also waitresses at the diner where these deserts are served. Her co-workers, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly), flutter around her as two deep-fried Southern soul-sisters. Together the three of them put up on a daily basis with old men, cranky cooks, and - in one particularly hilarious scene - passionate stalkers. Their trails and tribulations are funny and charming in a cute confectionary way and the three actresses have strong chemistry but even so, if the laughs had been the whole show the movie would have not been nearly so powerful or radiant.
Luckily for movie-goers Shelly has another trick up her sleeve. It turns out that Jenna has a husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto in a great shivering piece of sociopathic bullying), who is a psychotic nattering control freak. It also turns out that Jenna is pregnant...with Earl's baby. Seeing as how she was preparing to leave him, this mucks up her plans a bit. Eventually she falls into an affair with her married OB-GYN Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). Obviously some drama ensues. Still the picture would have been incomplete, good but not great, had it not been for the sharp skill with which this delightful "pie" of a film was assembled.
As described by Old Joe (Andy Griffith, still a man with killer comedic timing), Jenna's pies are great things because of the way they reveal themselves: letting each flavor be exposed, flower, and then introduce the next. The same can be said for Waitress as well. As the first scenes' comedy give way to a depper longing the two "flavors" - wit and gloom - mix to near perfect effect. Then come along a couple of wily visual tricks (the pie-creation sequences, the "Dear Baby" letters) that work with uncanny perceptiveness to show the audience, layer-by-layer, Jenna's starved and smothered soul. Soon even the gloom gives way, this time to discovery and rebirth, and to watch Keri Russell's face slowly awaken to the possibility of life is to witness one of the true movie experiences of the year.
Laughter is the buoyant common denominator in each act's plot thrust (her pregnancy, her affair, her friendship with Old Joe) and it is a rare thing that such an element is maintained throughout. But it is even more rare to me that Adrienne Shelly could mix her strong ingredients into a creation of such memorable taste and art. As Waitress reaches its Day-Glo fantasia epilogue - still with heart, soul, and smile intact - it has attained something suprassing even grace: it has reached bliss.
Jenna (Keri Russell) works all day crafting her heart's delight: pies; she also waitresses at the diner where these deserts are served. Her co-workers, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly), flutter around her as two deep-fried Southern soul-sisters. Together the three of them put up on a daily basis with old men, cranky cooks, and - in one particularly hilarious scene - passionate stalkers. Their trails and tribulations are funny and charming in a cute confectionary way and the three actresses have strong chemistry but even so, if the laughs had been the whole show the movie would have not been nearly so powerful or radiant.
Luckily for movie-goers Shelly has another trick up her sleeve. It turns out that Jenna has a husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto in a great shivering piece of sociopathic bullying), who is a psychotic nattering control freak. It also turns out that Jenna is pregnant...with Earl's baby. Seeing as how she was preparing to leave him, this mucks up her plans a bit. Eventually she falls into an affair with her married OB-GYN Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion). Obviously some drama ensues. Still the picture would have been incomplete, good but not great, had it not been for the sharp skill with which this delightful "pie" of a film was assembled.
As described by Old Joe (Andy Griffith, still a man with killer comedic timing), Jenna's pies are great things because of the way they reveal themselves: letting each flavor be exposed, flower, and then introduce the next. The same can be said for Waitress as well. As the first scenes' comedy give way to a depper longing the two "flavors" - wit and gloom - mix to near perfect effect. Then come along a couple of wily visual tricks (the pie-creation sequences, the "Dear Baby" letters) that work with uncanny perceptiveness to show the audience, layer-by-layer, Jenna's starved and smothered soul. Soon even the gloom gives way, this time to discovery and rebirth, and to watch Keri Russell's face slowly awaken to the possibility of life is to witness one of the true movie experiences of the year.
Laughter is the buoyant common denominator in each act's plot thrust (her pregnancy, her affair, her friendship with Old Joe) and it is a rare thing that such an element is maintained throughout. But it is even more rare to me that Adrienne Shelly could mix her strong ingredients into a creation of such memorable taste and art. As Waitress reaches its Day-Glo fantasia epilogue - still with heart, soul, and smile intact - it has attained something suprassing even grace: it has reached bliss.
Friday, June 1, 2007
The Pirates of the Caribbean: C
The first was something novel - a popcorn-fest that almost seemed to shimmer with drunken wit and action. Audiences everywhere drank deep its particular brand of rougish attitude: "look here!" it said, "we band of anti-heroes and beautiful innocents come to entertain you with our swords and our smarm!". And so entertain they did. Its follow-up aspired as highly as the first and failed, if not for lack of trying; its plot creaked and its characters wore a strange new ill-fitting characteristic - tragedy - and yet the rollicking presence of Johnny Depp & Co. was intact, and so what wasn't to love? And now rolling into theaters everywhere we have this third installment which, if I may speak frankly, stinks.
Go ahead. Hate me. Just be sure to hate me as much as I loathe the creative forces behind Pirtes of the Carribean: At World's End. Surely then the product will be loathed out of existence - the taint it has now spread over the preceeding two films erased.
The reality however is much colder; this third movie, continuing the travails of Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, a man desperately in need of acting classes), and Elizabeth Swan (Kiera Knightley), is such a grandly made bundle of nothing that after having watched it not hours ago, I struggle to remember whole pieces of the 170-minute running time.
On paper though the story seems to make a bold impression: pirates are brought back from death, grand romances are born and crushed, betrayals and retribution abound, and swooping cameras pant at the thought of the over-abounding action. There are plenty of new characters (Chow Yun Fat leaves a particularly nasty taste in my mouth), few of whom are worth noting, and the old bit-players get to experience the joy of watching their on-screen times beefed up to gratuitous levels. What all these extra bodies running around on screen amount to is just that: bodies running around, taking up space, breathing valuble oxygen and ultimately wasting your time and money.
That isn't to say there lacks a certain charm still to the Pirates' Machine - quite the opposite in fact. When Sparrow himself shows up after an endless first act, his daffy hillucinations and quicksilver presence finally give the film its much-needed jolt, and provide the rest of us with crackerjack entertainment. He has always been the vampy soul of these pictures and it is a rare bright spot that Depp can maintain his pin-point lunacy with such rabid glee. Imagine my surprise then to find that not even the Johnny Depp Enchantment can hold back (or rather, hold together) this film. This is mostly due to the fact that the world that Jack inhabits has seemingly devolved into a giant grab-bag of senseless noise.
You see after more than 5 hours of story, the Pirates franchise has shown its true roots: those of a theme park. These roots were once hidden - here by a cohesive-ish plot (Curse of the Black Pearl), there by potent comic energy (Dead Man's Chest) - but now they are exposed, in all of their ugly glory. It is evident in the characters' obstacles, the way that they appear and dissapear like the ups and downs of a roller coaster. And also in the charaters themselves, the sudden and quite pointless metamorphisis of a few key players adds little to the picture but a few tantilizing ideas...few of which pan out. Finally it is evident in the entire effort of the cast & crew. Gore Verbinski is a techincally talented director and he can stage quite beautiful action shots but his penchant for prolonged (and interesting) conflict has weaned after all this time. The writers, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, try to cover this up by creating more and more for our heroes to do but the final effect is the opposite of eating a large, rich feast...the end result is nausea with a touch of gas.
No doubt some will decry me for coming down so heavily on the movie; after all, it is just throw-away art right? Yet how can a person find a movie, no matter how entertaining, of high quality when at its core it is such mind-numbing, tiresome, ceaseless nonsense? At World's End is highly stylized, junky, pop-trash to be sure, and immensely watchable at that, but it has a far darker aspiration: it is, in its crowd-pleasing and completely prepostorous execution, the death of the that rare blockbuster genre created not so long ago by the original Pirates. How I long for those days.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 600-page novel about the rise of comic books in the mid 1900's that incorporates extensive explorations into such themes as inherent Jewishness and homosexuality. I loved every gosh-darn second of it; whizzing through the chapters of writer Michael Chabon's distinctive prose, savoring the central characters - Sam Klayman, a Jewish boy with comic-book empire dreams, and his cousin Josef Kavalier, a Czech refugee from Nazi Germany with a brilliant hand and a burning soul - and wallowing in the sheer ecstatic scope of the story. This is not an "epic" story, it is simply a great one (and one the best tales I have read in quite some time); go figure it won the Pulitizer Prize.
The story kicks off in Queens a few years before Pearl Harbor when, quite unceremoniously, Sammy Clayman meets his cousin Josef Kavalier - here to stay away from both Hitler's wrath...and his family, still trapped on the other side. Sammy soon discovers that the newly christened "Joe" has a great eye; Joe soon discovers that Sammy has a great ear. Together the two of them set out to build a dream castle - each hoping to invest in this magnificent structure their respective desires, dreams, and frustrations. For Sammy that means an empire of whizzing superheroes and acres of lean script; for Joe that means an empire of money with which to free his family. When you put these two together, the result is magic - both on the page and off. Soon, "The Escapist" is up and running (his origin story having been provided to the reader via a clever sleight-of-hand).
But that is just the beginning for these two cousins-turned-brothers-in-comics. As the Golden Age of Comics erupts around their ears, romance enters the picture. Joe meets Rosa Saks, a bizarre Surrealist painter who plays a major part of the book's fractured, compelling soul. Sammy meets Tracy Bacon, the handsome actor assigned to voice The Escapist in radio serials. Joe gets Rosa pregnant; Sam gets tired of "shadow games" with Tracy - sacrificing, as he finds out, the first and last true love of his life. But even this isn't the end...or even really the beginning.
No, the true start of Michael Chabon's immensely addictive story begins after Joe Kavalier returns from WWII. Here, in Brooklyn with a child and in the middle of a strange romantic-tangle, the novel thrums along on waves of lyricism, rage, melodrama, and love - replicating, as Chabon says himself, the style of Douglas Sirk. Together with Sammy and Rosa, Joe must try and sort out the pieces of his life - and theirs - while also trying to revive the imperiled "funny-book" genre. It is a surprising metaphor, paralleling the rise & fall of someone's life with that of a comic book, but it works wonders.
It would be unfair to say that this exquisite book is a leanly-written, high-brow affiar. The truth is the prose is unabashedly pulp, "purple" as some say, and it speaks with frankness about everything: sex, religon, love, family. Some may be offended by such out-in-the-open energy but there are other benefits to this style: huge scenes explode with vivid, unrivaled power (like Joe's brief stint in Antartica, or the closing scene of the entire enterprise), characters coil so tightly upon themselves they may almost seem to breathe real air, and the plot becomes almost impermeable to any sense of disbelief - the soft science fiction ideas and the fanciful turns of fortune having become reality
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the work of a magician; a wizard of imagination, scope, invention, and idea. Also like any great magic trick, I'm still not sure how its creator managed to pull the entire thing together (I could have sworn that for awhile, the plot's imminent unraveling seemed certain), but he has. As the reader finishes the final, 636th page, an ecstatic sense of satisfaction is sure to envelop of them. Yet there is sure to be sadness too; after all, here is the end of not just something magical, but also something more undeniably readable and wondrous than just about anything else in recent memory.
The story kicks off in Queens a few years before Pearl Harbor when, quite unceremoniously, Sammy Clayman meets his cousin Josef Kavalier - here to stay away from both Hitler's wrath...and his family, still trapped on the other side. Sammy soon discovers that the newly christened "Joe" has a great eye; Joe soon discovers that Sammy has a great ear. Together the two of them set out to build a dream castle - each hoping to invest in this magnificent structure their respective desires, dreams, and frustrations. For Sammy that means an empire of whizzing superheroes and acres of lean script; for Joe that means an empire of money with which to free his family. When you put these two together, the result is magic - both on the page and off. Soon, "The Escapist" is up and running (his origin story having been provided to the reader via a clever sleight-of-hand).
But that is just the beginning for these two cousins-turned-brothers-in-comics. As the Golden Age of Comics erupts around their ears, romance enters the picture. Joe meets Rosa Saks, a bizarre Surrealist painter who plays a major part of the book's fractured, compelling soul. Sammy meets Tracy Bacon, the handsome actor assigned to voice The Escapist in radio serials. Joe gets Rosa pregnant; Sam gets tired of "shadow games" with Tracy - sacrificing, as he finds out, the first and last true love of his life. But even this isn't the end...or even really the beginning.
No, the true start of Michael Chabon's immensely addictive story begins after Joe Kavalier returns from WWII. Here, in Brooklyn with a child and in the middle of a strange romantic-tangle, the novel thrums along on waves of lyricism, rage, melodrama, and love - replicating, as Chabon says himself, the style of Douglas Sirk. Together with Sammy and Rosa, Joe must try and sort out the pieces of his life - and theirs - while also trying to revive the imperiled "funny-book" genre. It is a surprising metaphor, paralleling the rise & fall of someone's life with that of a comic book, but it works wonders.
It would be unfair to say that this exquisite book is a leanly-written, high-brow affiar. The truth is the prose is unabashedly pulp, "purple" as some say, and it speaks with frankness about everything: sex, religon, love, family. Some may be offended by such out-in-the-open energy but there are other benefits to this style: huge scenes explode with vivid, unrivaled power (like Joe's brief stint in Antartica, or the closing scene of the entire enterprise), characters coil so tightly upon themselves they may almost seem to breathe real air, and the plot becomes almost impermeable to any sense of disbelief - the soft science fiction ideas and the fanciful turns of fortune having become reality
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the work of a magician; a wizard of imagination, scope, invention, and idea. Also like any great magic trick, I'm still not sure how its creator managed to pull the entire thing together (I could have sworn that for awhile, the plot's imminent unraveling seemed certain), but he has. As the reader finishes the final, 636th page, an ecstatic sense of satisfaction is sure to envelop of them. Yet there is sure to be sadness too; after all, here is the end of not just something magical, but also something more undeniably readable and wondrous than just about anything else in recent memory.
Before Sunset: A
There is something in Before Sunset, Richard Linklater's sequel to Before Sunrise, that I find so achingly romantic, so true, that not a single note played out over the course of 80 minutes could ever hold the chance of ringing false; to me it is even more resonant than Sunrise - if only for the sheer fact that where Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) were once almost desperately articulate, they are now just desperate (and in that, more real). I once said that as studies go of spontaneous contact, Before Sunrise was nearly perfect. Its successor is perfect; filling in the flaws and expanding its ideas.
After having spent a blissful night of conversation with each other nine years ago, Jesse and Celine parted ways. Now, at a book signing of Jesse's - he's spun a tale off of their shared night - they have the chance to reconnect. Together, with only hours to spare because of Jesse's inevitable flight home, they wander Paris in the afternoon; together the audience wanders with them. Each of them is wiser, older, but they still retain that mesmerizing banter, that immediate connection, that marked them as soulmates from the beginning. The dialogue itself, concocted this time by Linklater as well as Hawke & Delpy, blends wit, insight, and earthiness into a zesty mixture that is hard to forget.
Their journey is chronicled in flowing takes by the camera and it is a camera that proves mighty perceptive; it notices the way that Celine grows skittish as their rendezvous continues or the way that Jesse practically thrums with physical desire. You see, for all of their pent-up innate desire for the other, both of them now maintain a healthy layer of regret with which to cover it. It is a good thing though that these characters are not the same young idealists we fell in love with (that would have broken the spell) yet they aren't jaded mock-ups either (as that would have tainted the memory of the enchantment). Wisely they have instead grown deeper, richer; they both have their scabby emotional scars. They each now jostle cautiously around the other.
Where Before Sunrise was a tale of blossoming love, here is a tale of suspended romance; an affair that materialized only in those brilliantly relized minutes of breathy soulful exchange. Deprived as they were of that for many years, Jesse and Celine have grown cold - their lives now filled with details neither wanted. The meeting they have in Paris is a wake-up call for both, but what would they sacrifice to leave the mundane comfort of sleep? They dance an elegant rhthym around each other of longing, tragedy, and love but can it last? What if it can't? Will it still, as they say, be better to have "danced and lost then never to have danced at all"? It would be sadistic to spoil the subtle emotional complexities that result from this question or the details that unspool in the last moments but know this: these three highly talented thespian-filmmakers remain at the very tip-top of their dizzying romantic game.
After having spent a blissful night of conversation with each other nine years ago, Jesse and Celine parted ways. Now, at a book signing of Jesse's - he's spun a tale off of their shared night - they have the chance to reconnect. Together, with only hours to spare because of Jesse's inevitable flight home, they wander Paris in the afternoon; together the audience wanders with them. Each of them is wiser, older, but they still retain that mesmerizing banter, that immediate connection, that marked them as soulmates from the beginning. The dialogue itself, concocted this time by Linklater as well as Hawke & Delpy, blends wit, insight, and earthiness into a zesty mixture that is hard to forget.
Their journey is chronicled in flowing takes by the camera and it is a camera that proves mighty perceptive; it notices the way that Celine grows skittish as their rendezvous continues or the way that Jesse practically thrums with physical desire. You see, for all of their pent-up innate desire for the other, both of them now maintain a healthy layer of regret with which to cover it. It is a good thing though that these characters are not the same young idealists we fell in love with (that would have broken the spell) yet they aren't jaded mock-ups either (as that would have tainted the memory of the enchantment). Wisely they have instead grown deeper, richer; they both have their scabby emotional scars. They each now jostle cautiously around the other.
Where Before Sunrise was a tale of blossoming love, here is a tale of suspended romance; an affair that materialized only in those brilliantly relized minutes of breathy soulful exchange. Deprived as they were of that for many years, Jesse and Celine have grown cold - their lives now filled with details neither wanted. The meeting they have in Paris is a wake-up call for both, but what would they sacrifice to leave the mundane comfort of sleep? They dance an elegant rhthym around each other of longing, tragedy, and love but can it last? What if it can't? Will it still, as they say, be better to have "danced and lost then never to have danced at all"? It would be sadistic to spoil the subtle emotional complexities that result from this question or the details that unspool in the last moments but know this: these three highly talented thespian-filmmakers remain at the very tip-top of their dizzying romantic game.
Shrek the Third: B+
"Who knew potential fatherhood could be such a drag?" This is the question I found myself pondering as the first minutes of Shrek the Third took their uneasy, tottering steps. Our perpetual heroic misanthrope, Shrek (still voiced with cantankerous Irish-ness by Mike Meyers), starts off in the film as an unsure father-to-be. His wife, Fiona (Cameron Diaz, still sunny after two sequels), doesn't quite know it yet but her hubby ain't too keen on having rugrats. His uncertainty doesn't bode well for the picture, causing the opening scenes to teeter periously between the enjoyably contrived and the trite. Fear not however; whisked away as he is by a timely death of a certain monarch - a gag played up with lovable Shrek-ness-icity - Shrek soons finds more than enough on his plate other than the eventual bumpkins in Fiona's belly. Lucky for the audience too, as all of his mid-life crisis' woes didn't make for particularly entertaining art (not to mention falling short of the requisite bracing foolery of any long-standing Shrek plot device).
With his trusty sidekicks at his side, Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss-in-boots (Antonio Banderas), Shrek undertakes a valiant quest to rescue a person of royalty and in the process blah blah blah. The story isn't really new, as you can tell, but at least it still whizzes along with atleast twice the delightfulness of, say, Spider-Man 3. Predictable plot contrivances aside, and there are more than enough thank you in the first-half and climax combined, the movie is one of sassy bravura..even after all these years. Consider the way that the ugly step-sisters kibitz through scenes of far more pretty girls, stealing the spot-light in the process. That isn't a flaw on Shrek's part, it's just another one of the numerous flying gags; those indelible creations imagined on page way back with the fairy-tale Shrek and now given some new modicum of energy in the forth iteration - here by director Chris Miller and writers Andrew Adamson, Jeffrey Price, & Peter S. Seaman.
There are more storybook knock-offs to satirize, new characters to fall in love with (Artie, voiced by Justin Timberlake, is a particular favorite of myself...even in all of his mushy studio-produced sentimentality), and lots more visual gags. The latter are products of obviously deranged minds; people who have consumed inordinate amounts of pop culture, taken deep swigs of vodka, and then vommitted their contents all over the screen. The result is hilarious. Likewise the second-bananas of the group (I won't spoil who) are given some mighty cool scenes, some stinging one-liners, and one Willard joke so uniquely witty that it'll have you smiling for the remainder of the film. Who else but the Shrek franchise could cook up a world so deliciously fun in all of its wacky anarchy? Gifted still with a giddily good soundtrack and superb animation - the film makes Prince Charming's (Rupert Everett) hair seem as golden to us as it obviously is to him - the movie buzzes along about as winningly as as anything you'll likely see this summer.
Sure I'll give you that some of the sheen has worn off after six years, that the securely square moral lessons that now end each picture have grown tired, and that Shrek himself seems to be a constantly renewable lackey even after winning the woman and his own happiness. But there still remains very few movies - animated or not - that deliver such a riotous jolt by their credits. The dialogue may fall flat (lets all concede that Ted Elliot was gifted with a far sharper ear) more times than I find comfortable but Shrek the Third retains just enough of its predecessors' glimmering bounce to shine once again.
With his trusty sidekicks at his side, Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss-in-boots (Antonio Banderas), Shrek undertakes a valiant quest to rescue a person of royalty and in the process blah blah blah. The story isn't really new, as you can tell, but at least it still whizzes along with atleast twice the delightfulness of, say, Spider-Man 3. Predictable plot contrivances aside, and there are more than enough thank you in the first-half and climax combined, the movie is one of sassy bravura..even after all these years. Consider the way that the ugly step-sisters kibitz through scenes of far more pretty girls, stealing the spot-light in the process. That isn't a flaw on Shrek's part, it's just another one of the numerous flying gags; those indelible creations imagined on page way back with the fairy-tale Shrek and now given some new modicum of energy in the forth iteration - here by director Chris Miller and writers Andrew Adamson, Jeffrey Price, & Peter S. Seaman.
There are more storybook knock-offs to satirize, new characters to fall in love with (Artie, voiced by Justin Timberlake, is a particular favorite of myself...even in all of his mushy studio-produced sentimentality), and lots more visual gags. The latter are products of obviously deranged minds; people who have consumed inordinate amounts of pop culture, taken deep swigs of vodka, and then vommitted their contents all over the screen. The result is hilarious. Likewise the second-bananas of the group (I won't spoil who) are given some mighty cool scenes, some stinging one-liners, and one Willard joke so uniquely witty that it'll have you smiling for the remainder of the film. Who else but the Shrek franchise could cook up a world so deliciously fun in all of its wacky anarchy? Gifted still with a giddily good soundtrack and superb animation - the film makes Prince Charming's (Rupert Everett) hair seem as golden to us as it obviously is to him - the movie buzzes along about as winningly as as anything you'll likely see this summer.
Sure I'll give you that some of the sheen has worn off after six years, that the securely square moral lessons that now end each picture have grown tired, and that Shrek himself seems to be a constantly renewable lackey even after winning the woman and his own happiness. But there still remains very few movies - animated or not - that deliver such a riotous jolt by their credits. The dialogue may fall flat (lets all concede that Ted Elliot was gifted with a far sharper ear) more times than I find comfortable but Shrek the Third retains just enough of its predecessors' glimmering bounce to shine once again.
The Virgin Suicides: B-
I am afraid that in Sofia Coppola's first statement as a filmmaker, she hasn't really stated anything at all. Her debut, The Virgin Suicides, was based on a scabarously funny and detached look at angsty - and satirically enough, suicidal - teen life written into book form by Jeffrey Eugenides in 1993. She has retained his plot (thought it doesn't work so well on the big screen) and some of his edge (which explodes with laceration and laughs). What she has added to her strangely static literary touch are a few stylistic tweaks that never seem to cohese. Add to that the fact that, with painful deliberateness, almost none of the characters are ever given life and what you result in is a steaming pile of potential steeped in growing pains; a mis-step if ever there was one but still an oddly fascinating viewing experience.
Opening with shots of middle America, in all of its cinematic stage-y glory, the film seems lost, wandering, and that feeling doesn't ever truly fade. Even once the plot sets up - the five lisbon daughters are drawn one by one into the shadowy afterlife to escape their lifeless pods of existence ruled by their parents Mr. & Mrs. Lisbon (James Woods & Kathleen Turner) - the drama remains almost irritatingly inert. What hooks you from the beginning is the clever conceit that indeed all of these young girls will commit suicide before the lights go up. It's a good thing too that there is something to hook you from the start, as it would be a shame to eventually miss the pleasure of a realizing a true talent at work...even if that work be of flawed and failing nature.
As things start to fall into place (the first sister offs herself, romantic blossoms are given their first rays of light, etc) the picture as a whole manages at least to absorb, if not become wholly a part of, several different themes. You have the probing expose of hypocriticial suburbanites, an idea that works particularly well as a tentpole explanation for the girls' deaths. You have the melodramatic tragedy of young love squashed irrevocably; which, as a result, cause other tragic irrevocable things to happen as well. And last there exists the subtle notion that none of this really matters; that in the story of mass suicide there is niether heartbreak nor enlightenment...there is simply nothing.
As an artist, writer-director Coppola adapts well to all of these three themes but sticks maddeningly close to that last; explaining as her reason for doing so with contrived voice-overs that (against my better sense) I have to admit still carry a requisite somber energy. Kirsten Dunst, in the pivotal role of Lux Lisbon, showed a shocking early penchant for ability in her role and a fair amount of daring - since she is the only true character in this top-heavy tale. Mostly the other "characters" stand around reciting their lines but committing precious little energy. This prompts one to ask just how much energy did Coppola herself devote to breathing fresh personality into these book-bound creations?
True the film may be tragic on paper only; true also that in the sealed-up world of Michigan, 1975 in which the characters all live there exists very small increments of drama in which to care about. But guided as it were by numerous sleights-of-hand by the director herself and powered occasionally by jagged bolts of venomous verve, this dreamy and great-sounding film is by no means bad. The Virgin Suicides may only aspire to be great (if that), but what aspirations.
The O.C.: The Complete Second Season: B-
It was inevitable - I suppose - that The O.C., Josh Schwartz's exuberantly sharp and deeply entertaining soap opera, eventually fall so far from grace...but darn it if it isn't one of the most dissapointing television spectacles I have witnessed in some time (that, and of course Veronica Mars' quick third-season gutting). The reason I find it so probable that The O.C. turn so vapid so quickly (and really, 20 episodes constitutes as a relatively quick quality turnaround) lies in the very nature of the characters, and the show as whole, itself. The belief-defying original conceit - that a wealthy compassionate Newport family, the Cohens, would "adopt" a renegade street rebel named Ryan (Ben McKenzie, filled with appropriate slow-burn) and subsequently try and adapt him to their surface-loving life in Newport Beach, California - managed to charm its way into the hearts of the audience based mostly on a torrent of sincerity and wit. That power buoyed the show along well enough for the entire first season, kudos as well to the entire, thankfully sane, Cohen Family and the actors who played them, but due to some disconcerting shifts in its second season, The O.C. looks more and more like a cheap knock-off...rather than an upgrade. I am aware of course that teen soaps are by nature a product of the Machine, namely the television execs who herald them like the Messiah, but am I alone in thinking that where once The O.C.'s machinery glimmered, it now rusts?
I present as the first piece of evidence in my case: the characters. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), that lonely and whip-smart son who befriended Ryan, was once the geeky sex-symbol, the mascot, of The O.C. It is understandable why: he has an infectious energy that seeps into you like rot...but with the opposite effect; nearly his every moment on screen in the first season was thrilling in the most unexpected way. After all, here was a nerdy Jewish teenager who instantly became the focus of every room he was in, and consequently the focus of the entire audience as well. In his second season a scary fact has become apparent: Seth isn't really human anymore. What he has become now isn't really much of anything anymore - so much cobbled together energy glued helter skelter by the writing team's increasingly ridiculous character developments; he is a sickening self-parody of his former magnificent self. Adam Brody maintains a level of bright spunk but his core is gone...stolen away by the dues ex machina of network television.
I write about Seth's striking new change at such length because to me, his character has always been the hinge upon which so much else rests; without him, the other characters seem to deflate alittle. To those who don't believe me I present to you Ryan, once a multifaceted bad-boy with a shining - and believable - heart (I defy anyone not to be warmed by those scenes where he looks out for Seth), who was transmogrified into a straight-laced sop. Worse still, his smoldering energy was abandoned as well and what was left in his place looks more like it belongs in 90210 than in Chino; he's much too dour prep, and not enough layered teenager. Following right along with Ryan, the Cohen parents - Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Emmy-worthy Kelly Rowan) - sink into a deplorable pool of depression and loathing. There would atleast be a guilty jolt gleaned from watching their fights but mostly their emotions, and their storylines, remain more inert than explosive. Thankfully though I can say Gallagher and Rowan handle their trashy tales with mature (and winning) talent.
Moving forward, I present my second piece of evidence: the storylines. Once gifted with an arch perceptiveness (e.g. everyone's a cheat! everyone's a crook!) that rarely slid into camp, the stories now drift amok aimlessly picking, seemingly at random, new beloved people to torture with evermore numerous inane problems. There are no fewer than three plots about illicit affairs, one involving an illegitamate daughter, one about pornography, two different stories of love triangles, and a very poorly thought-out trifle of an idea about lesbians. And I'm not even counting the numbers of small waves created by the sudden arrival of several second-bannanas: Lindsay (Shannon Lucio), Alex (Olivia Wilde), and Zach (Michael Cassidy) - all of whom have, by the end of the year, found some sorry excuse to go straggling back to Character Hell.
And now my final piece of evidence, the one I feel has the most weight - as it infuriates me the most - as well as the most relevance to the plight of the still slightly-witty The O.C.: Josh Schwartz's departure. In the beginning he handled the majority of the writing, and his producing touch was everywhere. Similarly the show overflowed with quality. By the fourth episode of the second season, "The New Era", his persistent presence had waned and as a result the show wittled down; where once it was a rule-breaker as a vastly talented teen dramedy, it more and more limped along as a mere vestige of its former self.
That isn't to say there isn't some hope for it yet: the actors are still as great as they ever were, and Josh Schwartz still remains aboard the O.C.-ship, even if only as an executive-producer/occasional writer. A rebound is possible (one hopes) but if anything I've heard about the third season stands to be true, then The O.C. still has miles left to fall.
I present as the first piece of evidence in my case: the characters. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), that lonely and whip-smart son who befriended Ryan, was once the geeky sex-symbol, the mascot, of The O.C. It is understandable why: he has an infectious energy that seeps into you like rot...but with the opposite effect; nearly his every moment on screen in the first season was thrilling in the most unexpected way. After all, here was a nerdy Jewish teenager who instantly became the focus of every room he was in, and consequently the focus of the entire audience as well. In his second season a scary fact has become apparent: Seth isn't really human anymore. What he has become now isn't really much of anything anymore - so much cobbled together energy glued helter skelter by the writing team's increasingly ridiculous character developments; he is a sickening self-parody of his former magnificent self. Adam Brody maintains a level of bright spunk but his core is gone...stolen away by the dues ex machina of network television.
I write about Seth's striking new change at such length because to me, his character has always been the hinge upon which so much else rests; without him, the other characters seem to deflate alittle. To those who don't believe me I present to you Ryan, once a multifaceted bad-boy with a shining - and believable - heart (I defy anyone not to be warmed by those scenes where he looks out for Seth), who was transmogrified into a straight-laced sop. Worse still, his smoldering energy was abandoned as well and what was left in his place looks more like it belongs in 90210 than in Chino; he's much too dour prep, and not enough layered teenager. Following right along with Ryan, the Cohen parents - Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Emmy-worthy Kelly Rowan) - sink into a deplorable pool of depression and loathing. There would atleast be a guilty jolt gleaned from watching their fights but mostly their emotions, and their storylines, remain more inert than explosive. Thankfully though I can say Gallagher and Rowan handle their trashy tales with mature (and winning) talent.
Moving forward, I present my second piece of evidence: the storylines. Once gifted with an arch perceptiveness (e.g. everyone's a cheat! everyone's a crook!) that rarely slid into camp, the stories now drift amok aimlessly picking, seemingly at random, new beloved people to torture with evermore numerous inane problems. There are no fewer than three plots about illicit affairs, one involving an illegitamate daughter, one about pornography, two different stories of love triangles, and a very poorly thought-out trifle of an idea about lesbians. And I'm not even counting the numbers of small waves created by the sudden arrival of several second-bannanas: Lindsay (Shannon Lucio), Alex (Olivia Wilde), and Zach (Michael Cassidy) - all of whom have, by the end of the year, found some sorry excuse to go straggling back to Character Hell.
And now my final piece of evidence, the one I feel has the most weight - as it infuriates me the most - as well as the most relevance to the plight of the still slightly-witty The O.C.: Josh Schwartz's departure. In the beginning he handled the majority of the writing, and his producing touch was everywhere. Similarly the show overflowed with quality. By the fourth episode of the second season, "The New Era", his persistent presence had waned and as a result the show wittled down; where once it was a rule-breaker as a vastly talented teen dramedy, it more and more limped along as a mere vestige of its former self.
That isn't to say there isn't some hope for it yet: the actors are still as great as they ever were, and Josh Schwartz still remains aboard the O.C.-ship, even if only as an executive-producer/occasional writer. A rebound is possible (one hopes) but if anything I've heard about the third season stands to be true, then The O.C. still has miles left to fall.
Begin to Hope: B+
Regina Spektor, with her voice full of quirks and delicious turns of mood, has always been a rather off-putting artist. In 2004's "Soviet Kitsch" - her first cult success - her voice waxes and wanes with all the natural force of a hurricane. Her instruments clang-bang with a sort of delirious fervor, a devilish assault on the eardrums that invokes a certain ecstatic intoxication. Equally so her songs ebb and flow like the tide, some cresting beautifully ("Ode to Divorce") while others taunt you with their psuedo-novel playfullness ("Ghost of Corporate Future") while others still drag on, dying with a slow painful whimper ("Chemo Limo"). The common thread of all of them - and it may be the only thread in a C.D. this wildly theatrical - was her striking (albeit developing) talent as a nimble, crafty singer/song-writer. In "Begin to Hope", her most accomplished album yet, she matures - a thing to be lauded surely - even if it isn't completely.
I must concede at least that she has finally seemed to abandon those frustratingly opaque musical choices that have turned even some of her more fascinating work into drivel. Her first commercial hit, "Fidelity", has a lilting string tune so danceable, so charming that by the time her vocals burst triumphantly on the bridge your face just about breaks. More still, she has ramped up her once diminuative skill for narrative power, which leads to "Samson" - her first truly great song. The story, one of slight poetic melancholia, has a fascinating allure and once combined with her slow thoughtful (and blissfully bare) piano, the effect is like tonic: cleansing in its quiet statement that yes, yes there is a twenty-something hipster who can sing about something other than herself.
Her vocal and lyrical quirks still pop up. Except oddly enough in "Begin to Hope", they provide more cheeky fun than self-conscious wierdness. Take "Hotel Song" and "On The Radio": two strangely indecipherable tales about bees and knees and Orca Whales (don't ask about that last one till you hear it) that add up to a surprisingly enjoyable, oddly sharp kick; its like "Us", Spektor's smashingly thrilling ballad off of "Soviet Kitsch", revamped and redone into commercialized bliss - which, thankfully, allows most everyone to sample this woman's strange and abundant talents.
I won't say that she is perfect ("Edit", "That Time", and "Lady" still remind me of whonked-out crazy Regina) but when she is working at her best, or even on her newly found tragic dimension (e.g. "Field Below", the aforementioned "Samson"), she has a uniquely indelible force: creating whirlwinds of music at turns caustic, funny, creepy, insightful and - dare I say it? - brilliant. Regina Spektor has finally emerged, nearly 5 years after "11:11", as a true talent. Each creation is like a dream, melting away half-way through but leaving you with a great feeling none the less.
Moulin Rouge: B
Baz Luhrmann must have been in a state of giggly-delirium the entire time he was imagining Moulin Rouge. His thought process, surely a mash-up of glitzy decadence and kitschy tragedy, may have started off simple - a rock opera in one of the world's most famous night clubs, The Moulin Rouge - and yet somewhere along the way (perhaps after that first puff) it became a mess. Don't get me wrong, Moulin Rouge is a unique mess in a very appealing way: its grandiose chords of emotion, spliced over Luhrman's crazy pop-synthesis direction, have a way of lodging in your brain. All the while the film rhapsodizes on late twentieth pop-music - its characters burst spontaneously into Madonna, Elton John, Blondie, Nirvana - with an adulation very near mockery. But as much as the film may wow! you with its vivid boldness, it will most assuredly also leave you feeling stir-crazy...and a little sick.
Set in and around Paris in the year 1900, our first introduction is to Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young bohemian writer who through a series of strange events (The Sound of Music is referenced) ends up as a writer of a rock opera. As part of the job description he must meet Satine (Nicole Kidman), the vampy infamous star-courtesan of The Moulin Rouge, a steamy Parisian dance club headed by Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent). His first encounter, and the audience's, with the club is a tossed-off shrug of zonked out camera twitches, a desperate attempt by Luhrman to re-assert himself as the master of his truly singular style: riccocco pulp opera. The result of all his mad-house camera-work is that nothing seems to be making sense, or really happening. That is, until Satine herself appears from the ceiling, encircled by hot blue light. The film doesn't begin to work there though, bogged down as it is by Lynchian freakshows and an atmosphere of perverse claustrophobia. In fact it doesn't hit its rhythm until a vibrant Blondie-duet between Satine and Christian nearly forty minutes in.
A romance is built between Satine and Christian. Satine however has been promised to The Duke (Richard Roxburgh), The Moulin Rouge's financier. As a result, the two lovebirds have to keep their encounters a secret. As a result of that result, much like in - though garnering none of its wit - Shakespeare In Love, Christian writes his affair into his opera, "Spectacular Spectacular!". There is so much going on in the movie by that point though, that such a tragic turn becomes a thing of minor consequence...especially when held up against the gaudy potency of "Come What May".
Filled with music as it is, Moulin Rouge has a nasty tendency to remain oddly at arm's length; for all of its notes, only a handful don't go flat. When it does achieve the wild fantasia it needs so badly, Moulin Rouge has a magnetism that is undeniable. Its soundtrack is a work of ironic subversion and the leads, perhaps surprisingly, make all the right noise. Kidman does the best acting of her career, her waifish beauty in full tawdry splendor, and McGregor, in a star-making move, plumbs the startling depths of his talent for the one consistent note of sincerity in the entire film.
One cannot deny however that for all of its showy visual kicks (and there are many, Luhrman turns Paris into a digital playground) and clever sound-play, the core of the film is one of drugged impossibility; it is a deep-dish dream of an acid-trip for musical junkies to be sure but not one for the everyday moviegoer due mostly to the fact that half of what is going on isn't even really discernible...or necessary. Costumes, make-up, characters, and melodramatic contrivances are piled on with reckless frenzy - a sort of headache-inducing way of testing the "how far can I go?" question present in all imaginative cinematic work. The answer? Moulin Rouge goes way too far, way too often.
Far From Heaven: A
Far From Heaven, an exhiliratingly well-made movie, tinkers so sublimely with the sub-genre of 1950's Douglas Sirk suburban soap-operas that by the end it has achieved something very near iconic grace. Writer-director Todd Haynes channels with fetishistic uncanny the stitch-by-stitch beauty of Sirk's films but it is his own magnificent capibility as a filmmaker that succeeds this film - that sears into your mind, finally, the true magnitude of humanity.
Kathy Whittaker (Julianne Moore) lives in an idyllic community, spends hours with her idyllic friend Eleanor (Patricia Clarkson), and lives by idyllic rules - namely: always throw grand parties & never talk to negroes. Her life is in a word: perfect. Husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is quickly becoming a corporate honcho and her kids are little dreams of good behavior. She couldn't be happier and by mere virtue of her naievete, her perfect happiness, she is destined to fall. Just like Sirk's films however, the woman's fall is really only staged as such. It is actually an awakening of the soul; a born-again experience that allows the world to blossom anew, both for the protagonist and for the audience.
In one of many bold strokes, the spasms of passion that cause Kathy's undoing are as tightly-closeted affairs then - e.g. homosexuality, interracial relationships - as they are now. The characters slowly awaken to their capitulated emotions and go racing after them in many different ways, but their goal is universal and tragically human: to be in love. Shadows of metaphor and meta-irony dart across the screen on occasion - something here to evoke humor, something there to conjure delirium - but the movie states itself with directness and ravishing lyricism. Its message rings true and powerful: that though their searches may sometimes be in vain, the simple act of having ever wanted that "scandalous emotion" means more about life than frosted cookies ever will.
Julianne Moore, in a vision of a performance, enraptures the picture around her every word but it is Quaid and Haysbert, as Kathy's black gardener, who allow the picture to spread and darken - to question with unending curiousity exactly what makes us, then and now, tick. Filmed in an ever shifting color arrangment and scripted with all the flair that Douglas Sirk's dialogue lacked (although both still religously use "Leave It To Beaver"'s colloquillisms) Far From Heaven is perfect because it so wisely explores mood with charm and incandescent humanity; its overripe melodrama has real power. Far From Heaven is the rare cinematic experience that takes the the simple pleasure of living - of wanting to be alive - and seduces you with it.
Little Children: A-
In Todd Field's lusciously mature new film Little Children, not everyone acts their age. Set in the shady sprawl of Suburbia, Little Children takes its name from the pint-sized co-stars that are the focus of every major plot line in the movie, true, but it also enjoys a sort of perverse voyeurism from watching these childrens' parents - and the way they all collapse. Based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, who also helped write the screenplay with Field, and starkly photographed by Antonia Calvache this is a richly satisyfing piece of art; seemingly created with a dispassionate documentarian's eye that ensnares in its gaze numerous moments of quiet heartache and sharp satire.
Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) doesn't know how her life ended up the way it is now. She doesn't seem to remember marrying her once-divorced husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) and then having a daughter named Lucy (Sadie Goldstein). Now she spends her days haunting playgrounds trying to convince herself that she hasn't actually succumbed to the likes of other suburban zomibe women. It isn't working. That is, until she meets Brad (Patrick Wilson) and on a bet kisses him. From then on, their desires ignited, they spend precious weeks crafting a life for themselves amongst their respective shells they once called lives. But, just as we all know - and thanks to a magnificent touch involving trains - there is pressure building in the background and it is prepping to explode.
The film itself is a long one, nearly 140 minutes, and it packs in as many devious sub-plots (martyred pedophile anyone?) as it knows we are willing to take. But it also pays considerate, trenchant attention to the main act: the intertwining of Brad and Sarah. Their affections pay out with pained grandeur (it is a nice touch watching Brad's wife Kathy, played by Jennifer Connelly, working her way through her husband's new passion) but the film neither condescends to their love, villifying it, or exaggerates it, vindicating its torpid nature. Todd Field instead finds a decidedly adult middle road: a collective partaking of Perrotta's wit and his own ability as a painterly filmmaker, creating his stories with beautiful, morose strokes.
The movie's true brilliant achievement lies in its overarching metaphor, one that even manages to overcomes the film's occasional inconsistencies: that these studiously grown-up individuals are every bit as whiny, needy, simple and immediately magnetic as any four-year old. Playing their parts for all they are worth, mining emotions otherwise lacking from somewhat underdeveloped characters, Wilson and Winslet are sensational as narrow-minded lovers discovering for the first time true passion. It is no coincidence that Sarah discusses Madame Bovary at one point with a neighborhood book club. As for those touches of satire? They're to prove that though we are part of the joke, we are also in on it. By the end though you'll be completely hooked and there's no reason not to be. Todd Field has made a poignant statement of hypnotic voice and power: everyone is a child, just fumbling through the dark.
Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) doesn't know how her life ended up the way it is now. She doesn't seem to remember marrying her once-divorced husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) and then having a daughter named Lucy (Sadie Goldstein). Now she spends her days haunting playgrounds trying to convince herself that she hasn't actually succumbed to the likes of other suburban zomibe women. It isn't working. That is, until she meets Brad (Patrick Wilson) and on a bet kisses him. From then on, their desires ignited, they spend precious weeks crafting a life for themselves amongst their respective shells they once called lives. But, just as we all know - and thanks to a magnificent touch involving trains - there is pressure building in the background and it is prepping to explode.
The film itself is a long one, nearly 140 minutes, and it packs in as many devious sub-plots (martyred pedophile anyone?) as it knows we are willing to take. But it also pays considerate, trenchant attention to the main act: the intertwining of Brad and Sarah. Their affections pay out with pained grandeur (it is a nice touch watching Brad's wife Kathy, played by Jennifer Connelly, working her way through her husband's new passion) but the film neither condescends to their love, villifying it, or exaggerates it, vindicating its torpid nature. Todd Field instead finds a decidedly adult middle road: a collective partaking of Perrotta's wit and his own ability as a painterly filmmaker, creating his stories with beautiful, morose strokes.
The movie's true brilliant achievement lies in its overarching metaphor, one that even manages to overcomes the film's occasional inconsistencies: that these studiously grown-up individuals are every bit as whiny, needy, simple and immediately magnetic as any four-year old. Playing their parts for all they are worth, mining emotions otherwise lacking from somewhat underdeveloped characters, Wilson and Winslet are sensational as narrow-minded lovers discovering for the first time true passion. It is no coincidence that Sarah discusses Madame Bovary at one point with a neighborhood book club. As for those touches of satire? They're to prove that though we are part of the joke, we are also in on it. By the end though you'll be completely hooked and there's no reason not to be. Todd Field has made a poignant statement of hypnotic voice and power: everyone is a child, just fumbling through the dark.
Spider-Man 3: B-
It leaps. It bounds. It spins and twists with unhuman abilities! Spider-Man 3 shoots off, from the very get-go, with full force admiration for its central character, Peter Parker, and yet in those beginning "jeewhiz-ma-I'm-so-happy" moments, it is priming us for the collapse, the famed "inner struggle" that has been shouted from every cineplex for the last few months. Before it gets there - guided by the rollicking, fumbling energy of franchise director Sam Raimi - a lot of mishaps occur. Lest I give away the plot twists (of which there are seemingly dozens), let me just hint that characters are not always who them seem, and actors you once thought capable turn ingratiating in seconds.
But my hinting hardly can describe the spectacle that is Spider-Man. It is a big, goofy, opera of a movie - a galloping action ballet with grand gestures and silent tears. The comic book aura that is Spider-Man's origins make a fitting metaphor for this film: it is a large, ripely dramatic picture inked into the national conscience with panoramic special effects and photogenic screen stars with curling baby dimples. The citizenry turn villianous with almost reckless abandon and yet their transformations get lost in the brouhaha that is the opening hour. Romance is worn on the sleeves of Raimi's screenplay (knocked together with his brother Ivan) and Tobey Maguire stands in almost every scene trapped between an infant's giggle and a man's piercing gaze. The plot seems a fractured straight line, sacrificing the ambitious, cohesive bravado of Spider-Man 2 for a scattershot crowd-pleaser.
And yet my quibbles with the film may mask the enjoyment that is to be gleaned, and there is a lot of enjoyment here. To name just a few things, J.K. Simmons still ball-busts with appropriate comedic rage and newcomer Topher Grace seeths with sleazy malevolence. Kirsten Dunst, freed artistically by Sophia Coppola in last summer's Marie Antoinette, forces her character Mary Jane to atleast grow a semblence of a personality and the special effects still fly by with whiz-bang gusto. The climax of the film is such a boisterous explosion that the many inconsistencies are almost forgotten...almost.
Maybe it is because Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer-prize winning craftsman of 2's script, is missing here - necesitating of course that the majesty is gone as well. Maybe as well it is that Maguire's struggling as an actor is becoming more and more evident, his suit tighter and tighter. Or maybe it is really because Sam Raimi turns a once purported "central theme" (e.g. Parker's struggle against that black goo symbiote) of this film into a one-note joke, and a ridiculous one at that. In the end though, the real answer I think lies in the whole of the experience itself: Spider-Man stumbled when it should have soared.
A Room With A View: B-
I have been told that in book-form, E.M. Forrester's A Room With A View is a great, charismatic work. Though I have never read Forrester, I can attest to the fact that this extraordinarily literal-minded adaptation by famed team Ivory-Merchant isn't very charismatic at all. By bringing a love story to screen, with a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, directory James Ivory and producer Ishmail Merchant have completely forgotten one of E.M. Forrester's biggest objectives in his writing: the lives of quirky, compassionate rich people. Or perhaps it is because the "dame" in this grand English romance is played with such a sullen snarl of character by Helena Bonham Carter that I find little more to this trifle than some silly fou-fouing and then a kiss.
Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) is on a trip to Florence, Italy. It seems a fun, memorable vacation...if one forgets that Lucy is being escorted by her cousin, Charlotte (Maggie Smith in a thanklessly ridiculous role with which she takes grand comedic command). There they meet the romance novelist Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench) who tries with all sorts of salacious haste to bring to them the intoxicating passion that populates all old Italian towns. They spend the rest of the time cavorting about Italy acting as ditzy English tourists and having all kinds of misadventures directly intended to provide slight little laughs. But lest we forget, before Lucy heads back to England she meets the gaze of George Emmerson (Julian Sands) who offers her his room with a view. By the time the vacation is over they have shared a passionate kiss and the audience is told with stern finger-wagging that they must sit through the next 60 minutes just to watch the two lovebirds come to their sense and fall in love.
The reason I sound so cynical, so aggrivated by the whole production is that, is that in any good romance of class-shattering proportions there must be an acknowledged sense of romantic spirit...or charisma. I must concede that there are moments that pop off the screen with spirit and richness that I almost could bring myself to love this movie for those times, however brief. And especially in those scenes with Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis, and the rest of the Honeychurch Clan, I did laugh great gustos. Plus the film is made with an attractive pedigree and such ability shows through in some of the finer stylistic details.
The possibility, as I mentioned from the start, still haunts me that since our heroine - our admirable protagonist blind to the love beckoning her from around the corner - is such a petulant brat there is no emotional attachment to her travails. Thus the climax of the film loses much of its charge. Despite the fact that the movie boasts E.M. Forrester's name, it has little of his energy.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: A-
Russell Crowe, in complete control of his considerable talent, is featured prominently on the movie posters for "Master and Commander". There's an obvious reason for this: when the film was made he was just coming off a roughly hewn, glorious crowd pleaser ("Gladiator) as well as an incisive psychological drama ("Beautiful Mind") that pleased the few critics still unsure as to Crowe's talent. He was at the top of the A-list ladder. I'm sorry to dissapoint those movie watchers hoping for him to have ended his incredible streak of films with Peter Weir's latest, insular beauty but he doesn't. Instead, he emerges again as an actor of visceral and versatile glee in a story more than ready to accomodate him - and in some cases, outpace him. The movie, adapted from two of Patrick O'Brian's twenty volumes about men and boys on the seas in the 19th century, will surprise those looking for an action romp - heck, it surprised me - but by its conclusion the pure radiant intelligence and uncommon comraderie with which it was made will leave you more than satisfied.
Capt. "Lucky" Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) has been ordered by the British Royal Navy to chase down the French warship Acheron and take it at any cost. Aubrey, a captain of rugged discipline and brilliance, is more than willing to comply and his journey after his prey, a ship much more able in the water than his Surprise, comprises the entire film. Read between the lines though and the real story becomes clear: the film is an invitation to sit back and watch, as well as take part in the joys of life on the high-seas. You'll be able to practically smell the wet wood, and hear the jeers and laughter of the sailors as they go about cleaning, fishing, preparing for whatever life lies before them. And, every so often, you might hear the sounds of Aubrey's violin-cello duet with his friend - and the Surprise's surgeon - Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). Bettany stands up to his co-star with wit and poise and his relationsip with Aubrey is the film's emotional core but his jostling with every soul residing on the tiny wooden box that is a sailor's home brings a certain sincerity to this character, as to Crowe's.
Only two major action sequences punctuate the 130 minutes that roll forth marvelously from the opening credits but boredom never, ever, haunts this keen and ravishing movie. What Peter Weir, who also wrangled the script together with John Collee, has nailed with precision and almost supernatural mimcry is O'Brian's eye for historical detail and unbridled energy for a geniune, page-turning story. It doesn't hurt of course that Weir is also willing to contribute his own unique brand of brains when it comes to isolation in a confounding, brutal world. Brought together, these two great documentarians of human beings brought to the fore of the World in all of its beauty have created a masterful cinematic journey; a sharp, great, well-made tale of honor and friendship that is as thrilling in its cannon blasts as in the dinner of ship officers.
I can't say quite enough how much I enjoyed this movie but the nagging thought that the quiet power of the middle act is out of step perhaps with the overriding tale of revenge and war-making still irritates me. Yet, I stand equally in awe of the fact that Weir has managed to transplant O'Brian's historical adventures to the screen and furthermore transfigure it with his own distinctive style and put forth to all an exciting yarn that is, just as its two stars, a marvel.
Capt. "Lucky" Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) has been ordered by the British Royal Navy to chase down the French warship Acheron and take it at any cost. Aubrey, a captain of rugged discipline and brilliance, is more than willing to comply and his journey after his prey, a ship much more able in the water than his Surprise, comprises the entire film. Read between the lines though and the real story becomes clear: the film is an invitation to sit back and watch, as well as take part in the joys of life on the high-seas. You'll be able to practically smell the wet wood, and hear the jeers and laughter of the sailors as they go about cleaning, fishing, preparing for whatever life lies before them. And, every so often, you might hear the sounds of Aubrey's violin-cello duet with his friend - and the Surprise's surgeon - Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). Bettany stands up to his co-star with wit and poise and his relationsip with Aubrey is the film's emotional core but his jostling with every soul residing on the tiny wooden box that is a sailor's home brings a certain sincerity to this character, as to Crowe's.
Only two major action sequences punctuate the 130 minutes that roll forth marvelously from the opening credits but boredom never, ever, haunts this keen and ravishing movie. What Peter Weir, who also wrangled the script together with John Collee, has nailed with precision and almost supernatural mimcry is O'Brian's eye for historical detail and unbridled energy for a geniune, page-turning story. It doesn't hurt of course that Weir is also willing to contribute his own unique brand of brains when it comes to isolation in a confounding, brutal world. Brought together, these two great documentarians of human beings brought to the fore of the World in all of its beauty have created a masterful cinematic journey; a sharp, great, well-made tale of honor and friendship that is as thrilling in its cannon blasts as in the dinner of ship officers.
I can't say quite enough how much I enjoyed this movie but the nagging thought that the quiet power of the middle act is out of step perhaps with the overriding tale of revenge and war-making still irritates me. Yet, I stand equally in awe of the fact that Weir has managed to transplant O'Brian's historical adventures to the screen and furthermore transfigure it with his own distinctive style and put forth to all an exciting yarn that is, just as its two stars, a marvel.
Fay Grim: A
Imagine for a moment that someone took the twisty devilry of the "Bourne" franchise and crossed it with the psuedo-pscychological satire of "American Beauty" and you'd have something close to what Hal Hartley has created in "Fay Grim". Once you consider the many great elements thrown into this production, though the idea may seem far-fetched, the result couldn't have been any less than great. Start with Parker Posey as Fay, toss in Jeff Goldblum as FBI Agent Fullbright, stir in a pench of romanticism, and set the whole thing to "sizzling originality" and out comes a straight-faced comedic espionage masterpiece.
Starting off 10 years after the end of "Henry Fool" (this is the sequel), writer-director Hartley starts off slow and builds on his plot like one would a building, adding extra floors of deception and fast-flying elevators of clever wordplay as the movie develops. Fay Grim (Parker Posey, nailing laughs even as she brushes her teeth) has a son (Liam Aiken) who has been kicked out of school for distributing a pornographic toy. She is afraid this is the first sign that he is becoming like his father, Henry, who dissapeared some years earlier and is now considered a fugitive from United States justice. With nowhere to turn she decides to get her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), out of jail. Incidentally, the feds also need her to go to Europe and track down some of her husband's confessions, volumes filled with rubish that now presumably holds the key to many different countries' security. She agrees to the task in order to set Simon free and off she goes to France, almost immediately imbroiled in a globe-spanning conspiracy that looks silly only if we didn't see it every summer for $9 a piece.
Hartley, his camera almost always located at off-kilter angles, is a playful filmmaker though and isn't content to watch his project fall apart to the standard cliches. Yet he isn't willing to abandon them either. Working with a particular brand of alchemist magic, he instead mashes-up two unlikely genres - those of ridiculouso parody and noir-ish thriller - and pulled off a divine trick: a movie that is brazenly idiosyncratic, fresh, sublimely tart and suprisingly compelling. By the time Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) himself shows up as a fiery egotist in the posession of his best friend, the terrorist (Anatole Taubman), you're either in on the joke or confounded by it. For those that get it, they're in for at treat; they have hooked onto the wavelength of a mad-cap storyteller and a dead-pan comedian and are witness to the work of a cult director reaching his artistic high.
Hartley pulls apart conventions like taffy and probes global issues with profundity and razor wit. Of course, he's also working with a supremely game cast, which makes the package all the sweeter. For those that aren't willing to go along with this brilliant cinematic creation, I'd call a doctor: something is seriously wrong with you.
The Perfect Storm: C
It is a prerequisite for anyone that is going to die after a prolonged battle in a disaster flick to have some iota of character. Otherwise, what's the point? If the audience doesn't care as someone watches their own life slip away, then that charge of tragedy that normally accompanies a good disaster flick (say, "Titanic") is missing. This is the biggest problem with "The Perfect Storm", but not its only one. Off the top of my head I can think of the ADD editing, the ruinous writing towards the end, and the inane logic that powers some of the more "inspirational moments" that seek to stave off what really should have been the whole point of this flick: the storm.
In Gloucester, MA Captain Billy Tyne (George Clooney) is in desperate need of a good catch. His boss is breathing down his neck for not yet breaking a cold streak a mile long and his life back on shore isn't really all that great either. But Billy though, isn't willing to give up. He needs the sea (although it apparently doesn't need him). So he rounds up his crew for the "turnaround of the century" and heads out into the wild deep blue. Needless to say he manages the catch of his life but then their ice machine breaks. Hell bent to not be denied, Tyne has to race back to the coast...and through the most powerful storm ever.
Though the above story is true, you wouldn't know it from the first half-hour. Instead, big orchestral scores swell and bang with noble force and the director swoops his camera over the peers of the rough New England coast with barely contained awe. All the while, story lines are in the process of growing, of showing us these gruff sailors have wives and sons and mothers and brothers and are just all around good guys who really didn't deserve what awaits them. One of these story lines - Dale "Murph" Murphy (John C. Reilly) struggles to bond with his kid - is just as emotionally underdeveloped as the one about "Bugsy" (John Hawkes) having an impromptu, unnessecary connection with a bar whore named Irene (Rusty Schwimmer). And of course, like any "important" big-studio picture, its idea of storytelling is as good-natured, good-humored, and heavy-handed as if you're being hit over the head with a cement block labeled "Look! They're GREAT people bound for DEATH!!".
All these flaws - the poor character development, the extraneous stories - would prove minor if the true star of the show, the Storm, were anywhere near as immense and organic as it needed to be. In Sebastian Junger's book on which this movie is based, Hurricane Grace screams with the fury of a women scorned. In the adaption on screen, it merely goes slamming against people we should care about (but don't) while the camera goes hopping around with a frenzied editing intended to cause extreme intensity (but doesn't). There really isn't time to do much of anything but sit back in your seat and experience the nausea-inducing pace of this ostentatious movie. There exists so little reason to care about anyone here that I haven't found need to mention the good acting done here by Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane.
In rare moments does director Wolfgang Petersen achieve the kind of hydrophobia he's been reaching for but these are few and far between. Petersen should have chosen either character-based tragedy or edge-of-your-seat thrills. Instead he has chosen a thudding, irritating middle road that has forsaken everthing for a thrill his movie constantly reaches for but never attains.
In Gloucester, MA Captain Billy Tyne (George Clooney) is in desperate need of a good catch. His boss is breathing down his neck for not yet breaking a cold streak a mile long and his life back on shore isn't really all that great either. But Billy though, isn't willing to give up. He needs the sea (although it apparently doesn't need him). So he rounds up his crew for the "turnaround of the century" and heads out into the wild deep blue. Needless to say he manages the catch of his life but then their ice machine breaks. Hell bent to not be denied, Tyne has to race back to the coast...and through the most powerful storm ever.
Though the above story is true, you wouldn't know it from the first half-hour. Instead, big orchestral scores swell and bang with noble force and the director swoops his camera over the peers of the rough New England coast with barely contained awe. All the while, story lines are in the process of growing, of showing us these gruff sailors have wives and sons and mothers and brothers and are just all around good guys who really didn't deserve what awaits them. One of these story lines - Dale "Murph" Murphy (John C. Reilly) struggles to bond with his kid - is just as emotionally underdeveloped as the one about "Bugsy" (John Hawkes) having an impromptu, unnessecary connection with a bar whore named Irene (Rusty Schwimmer). And of course, like any "important" big-studio picture, its idea of storytelling is as good-natured, good-humored, and heavy-handed as if you're being hit over the head with a cement block labeled "Look! They're GREAT people bound for DEATH!!".
All these flaws - the poor character development, the extraneous stories - would prove minor if the true star of the show, the Storm, were anywhere near as immense and organic as it needed to be. In Sebastian Junger's book on which this movie is based, Hurricane Grace screams with the fury of a women scorned. In the adaption on screen, it merely goes slamming against people we should care about (but don't) while the camera goes hopping around with a frenzied editing intended to cause extreme intensity (but doesn't). There really isn't time to do much of anything but sit back in your seat and experience the nausea-inducing pace of this ostentatious movie. There exists so little reason to care about anyone here that I haven't found need to mention the good acting done here by Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane.
In rare moments does director Wolfgang Petersen achieve the kind of hydrophobia he's been reaching for but these are few and far between. Petersen should have chosen either character-based tragedy or edge-of-your-seat thrills. Instead he has chosen a thudding, irritating middle road that has forsaken everthing for a thrill his movie constantly reaches for but never attains.
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