Documentaries about musicians are a stock craft: they often seek to set-up the usually deceased singer as an idol, a god, of righteousness and, if possible, piety and charity. Sometimes though it can go even worse as when a reel of facts and interviews unintentionally vilify the subject instead of vindicating him or her. "Last Days of Left Eye" really does niether and it does both; it is a scrappy film filled to the brim with messy presence that at times can prove powerfully graceful. The most potent ability to boasts is that capablity to reveal in tiny increments, or in quiet gestures, who Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez was.
Left Eye was most famous for her huge success as the "L" in TLC, one of the highest selling female bands of all time and one of brightest acts of the 90's. She was also famous for her controveries: flying off the handle on her bandmates and her boyfriend. After being cast off by her own decision, and having had her solo effort Supernova shelved after massive amounts of publicity, Lopez went to Honduras for a 30-day spiritual retreat. While there she filmed herself constantly. Whether she was swimming or divulging thoughts to the camera, she was constantly exposing herself. Her desire behind such a project - she wanted the world to know, really know, the real Left Eye - lends it a hypnotic confessional aura at times. Of course, while she was in Honduras she was also killed. It is her untimely death that lends the film much needed emotional gravity but it is her electrifying persona that lends it a core of towering skill as the rare film that brings to light a gnarled and complicated portrait of a woman destined, by sheer mastery of her many talents, to be a mega-star.
At turns witty and compassionate, at others cold and irreverent, Lisa Lopez is the perfect documentary subject and her character is even more real for having been caught on film in the most everyday acts. The footage that she directed herself has a stringent power as a heady cocktail of desperate self-awareness and searching need. The structure of the film around the film that is her 30-day trip is alittle more messy. Utiziling the expected information (her rise to stardom, her fights, her arson) as well as sweeping visuals of South America is a lofty idea and it works for the most part - especially when brought together with Lisa's insightful musings. Yet in the film's striving to trace the downward spiral of Lopez, it falters on numerous occasions. Slipping on the tricky issue of strange tribal doctors and then again with footage of her bitchy assistant, the final years of the singer don't play so much gloomy and symbolic of her coming doom (as intended) but rather as a mash-up of the wrong social circle and out-of-context footage.
Where it falters once in death though, it soars in life. As a celebration of human life it is a spell-binding movie. It's skillfull in the way, thanks in part as well to Lauren Lazin, it shows Lisa in the midst of her various examinations, teasing us with the thought that she's dead. And in the way that is splices her outrages with her heart and intelligence, it is wonderfully dynamic. Doesn't it, in the end, makes sense that such a professedly jubilant study of life would be amateurish when it comes to death? Ultimately though, by bringing us so close to such a momentous and vibrant existence, this documentary is a rousing success.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Remains of the Day: A
It is the rare novelist that can turn even the most mundane of life's events into a tale of resplendent force. Stevens, the central character in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, has been a butler for many years. He has served only two prominent masters: Lord Darlington (who owned the residence that Stevens currently works at, Darlington Hall) and Mr. Farraday - the man who hired Stevens after Lord Darlington's death. On a whim Stevens decides that he will inquire as to the employment status of a former housekeeper, Mrs. Kenton, and perhaps see if she is interested in returning to the grand old mansion. When given the leave to do so, he sets off on a five-day journey to bring him back into contact with a long lost friend. Along the way perhaps he will sample some of the famous sights that are visibile in his homeland but that he has never seen.
Ishiguro is writing solely with that narrative thread in mind. Or at least, it would seem so. Armed with as much wisdom and compassion as he had in 2005's chilling Never Let Me Go, his sublimely well-paced tale races off the page - as any good confessional does. Yet it isn't an outright confession you are reading. After all, the butler hasn't done anything wrong has he? The answer, the graceful climax that results, is what drives you through his slim tale of a man revisiting his past on an innocuous vacation drive. His memories are sometimes uproarious, others are cruelly repressed. he narrator's thoughts themselves are as flawed as the memories he reflects on.
It is an indelible force of a character that has been written into this manswervant and the author wields his presence with a virtuostic skill. The haunting outward supernatural element is missing from this masterpiece as it wasn't from Never Let Me Go, but the result is something infinitely more paramount. Kazuo Ishiguro has taken T.S. Elliot's famous quote "the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper" and scrambled it all to hell, creating perfection in the process.
Ishiguro is writing solely with that narrative thread in mind. Or at least, it would seem so. Armed with as much wisdom and compassion as he had in 2005's chilling Never Let Me Go, his sublimely well-paced tale races off the page - as any good confessional does. Yet it isn't an outright confession you are reading. After all, the butler hasn't done anything wrong has he? The answer, the graceful climax that results, is what drives you through his slim tale of a man revisiting his past on an innocuous vacation drive. His memories are sometimes uproarious, others are cruelly repressed. he narrator's thoughts themselves are as flawed as the memories he reflects on.
It is an indelible force of a character that has been written into this manswervant and the author wields his presence with a virtuostic skill. The haunting outward supernatural element is missing from this masterpiece as it wasn't from Never Let Me Go, but the result is something infinitely more paramount. Kazuo Ishiguro has taken T.S. Elliot's famous quote "the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper" and scrambled it all to hell, creating perfection in the process.
Fahrenheit 9/11: B+
There is a moment in Fahrenheit 9/11 that surpasses all others as the one that defines best Michael Moore's argument agaisnt Bush as President. A woman travels to Washington D.C. for a job conference and while she is there she decides to visit the White House. Not so irregular for most Americans but for this woman, it is different: he son was killed in Iraq. As she stands there before the barriers blocking her from coming any closer, she dissolves on camera. But it isn't just her grief that has overwhelmed her, it is a feeling of nauseating helplessness that has struck her the final blow. This woman, once a "conservative Democrat", has had the rug swept out from under her both as a mother and as an American. Moore's point, and one he drives home with outraged precision, is that she isn't the only one. That moment propels Fahrenheit 9/11 to a level that a populist filmmaker such as Moore loves to go to: a place where he can connect to us, with as minimal "media interference" as possible, his outrage. It is a moment that transcends the film.
It is sad then that this documentary didn't have more of those connections. Instead it is a collection of a wide variety of data sources - ranging from Senators to amputees to the Washington Post - that help build a case for why George W. Bush may just be not only the worst American President in history, but also the most dangerous. The chief evidence at work here, and it is compelling stuff, is how the Saudi royals (who can count a number of the Bin Laden family amongst them) have an inordinate number of ties to the Bush family and all of its friends. Billions of dollars have been exchanged between the two most powerful Saudi Arabian families, those being the Royal Family and the Bin Ladens, and the Bushes. Business ventures that George W. kickstarted as a young capitalist were driven into the ground by his ineptness and then magically - magically! - they were saved by investments handled by a previous Air Guard colleague of W.'s with the money of...guess who? The Saudis! And around and around the carousal goes. Without even mentioning the many other dubious connections that top administrative officials have had with, and in some cases still do have, with Saudi Arabia, Moore brings to light the vast web painted with blood and oil by the White House.
And still his vast arsenal of evidence has yet to dry up. Though Moore's other charges may prove less scandalous (e.g. Saudi Arabia actually had a link to Ossama Bin Laden), the method in which they are all spliced together forms a disturbing portrait of a man being ruled by many different masters. That man is our current President and on the list of priorities, America is at the bottom while perhaps attacking Iraq to appease a certain other Middle Eastern country, regardless of authentic reasons, is at the top.
At two hours, the film still finds time to include thoughts on the 2000 election as well as how the Defense Branch is running itself (or rather, being run by capitalists out to make a quick buck, as seen in a chilling speech at a conference of high powered American coporations entitled "ReBuidling Iraq"). The overall effect of this information and running commentary - Moore has never seemed more sarcastic and more infuriated - is enticingly dark and yet as an argument it's a bit one-sided...and cheap. The documentary needed to be more immediate and righteous. For every moment of our Commander looking dumbstruck on the morning of 9/11 there are out-of-context shots of Bush holding press meetings while golfing. This is a piece of slickly made ferocity that doubles as humorous polemic cinema but it spends too much time being glib.
It needed more weeping mothers and a little less gadfly fat white man.
It is sad then that this documentary didn't have more of those connections. Instead it is a collection of a wide variety of data sources - ranging from Senators to amputees to the Washington Post - that help build a case for why George W. Bush may just be not only the worst American President in history, but also the most dangerous. The chief evidence at work here, and it is compelling stuff, is how the Saudi royals (who can count a number of the Bin Laden family amongst them) have an inordinate number of ties to the Bush family and all of its friends. Billions of dollars have been exchanged between the two most powerful Saudi Arabian families, those being the Royal Family and the Bin Ladens, and the Bushes. Business ventures that George W. kickstarted as a young capitalist were driven into the ground by his ineptness and then magically - magically! - they were saved by investments handled by a previous Air Guard colleague of W.'s with the money of...guess who? The Saudis! And around and around the carousal goes. Without even mentioning the many other dubious connections that top administrative officials have had with, and in some cases still do have, with Saudi Arabia, Moore brings to light the vast web painted with blood and oil by the White House.
And still his vast arsenal of evidence has yet to dry up. Though Moore's other charges may prove less scandalous (e.g. Saudi Arabia actually had a link to Ossama Bin Laden), the method in which they are all spliced together forms a disturbing portrait of a man being ruled by many different masters. That man is our current President and on the list of priorities, America is at the bottom while perhaps attacking Iraq to appease a certain other Middle Eastern country, regardless of authentic reasons, is at the top.
At two hours, the film still finds time to include thoughts on the 2000 election as well as how the Defense Branch is running itself (or rather, being run by capitalists out to make a quick buck, as seen in a chilling speech at a conference of high powered American coporations entitled "ReBuidling Iraq"). The overall effect of this information and running commentary - Moore has never seemed more sarcastic and more infuriated - is enticingly dark and yet as an argument it's a bit one-sided...and cheap. The documentary needed to be more immediate and righteous. For every moment of our Commander looking dumbstruck on the morning of 9/11 there are out-of-context shots of Bush holding press meetings while golfing. This is a piece of slickly made ferocity that doubles as humorous polemic cinema but it spends too much time being glib.
It needed more weeping mothers and a little less gadfly fat white man.
Bowling for Columbine: A-
If I am allowed to use a few "gun" adjectives with which to describe Michael Moore's incredibly outraged, powerfully lacerating documentary then I will start with a simple one: scattershot. The film, at once an expose and a thought piece, throws an immensely large quantity of information at you. Some of it has been challenged based on their factual accuracy, but the vast majority of them stand as evidence against a nation that fascinated with it's "righteous" nature to break into spasms of violence. And at more than two hours, there are many bits of evidence. But don't think that Moore (contrary to what some believe) is out to rage against guns. No, instead he is here to make a piece of cinema that gracefully splices together all sorts of media (from animation to stand-up) in order to prove a disturbing point: that America isn't hopped up on guns, it's hopped up on the paranoia that necesitates those firearms.
Shot in Moore's infamous, one-man guerrilla style, Bowling for Columbine has that rare opportunity to target no one and yet question everything. Though he uses Columbine as a jumping point (and displays some shocking footage of the killing spree that went on there), Moore is more interested in all forms of gun violence and the question that must then go after that: why are we as Americans so content to just shoot each other?
The answers don't come easily and that proves the film's strongest point. Without picking out specific persons of power to blame (be they the K-Mart CEO or Charleton Heston), the documentary leaps from one inflamatory point of investigation to another, all the while revealing in its - yes, scattershot - way that what sets us as a country apart (other than our incredibly high murder rate) is our addiction to fear.
Though it may grow muddier from time to time, Moore's movie is scathing and heartrending. His ambush-interviews of Dick Clark and Heston prove powerfully telling of our gun culture and his hopped-up frenzied use of montages - some that explore the various political assasinations carried out by our government, others that serve as reminders of our latent attitudes towards gun sales - is hilarious and insightful. Ultimately though, insight takes a back seat to the real force behind Columbine: honest curiousity at what makes such a bloodthirsty culture tick. With guns blazing, Michael Moore is out to find the answer, both as a documentarian and a humorist.
Well versed in rabble-rousing theatrics, Bowling for Columbine, surely proves controversial and provocative but its message, the power that it wields with such gangly force, lies in its simple, probing nature. In its final climactic moment - the interview with NRA President Charles Heston that ends in him storming off - Moore gets you on his wavelength. Those final minutes tear away all preconceived notions of Michael Moore as a politician masquerading as a filmmaker and result in a culminating moment of pure, unrelenting, humanity and sadness. Afterwards I couldn't help to think: how many of those moments have been created by bullets in a haze of very un-American terror?
Shot in Moore's infamous, one-man guerrilla style, Bowling for Columbine has that rare opportunity to target no one and yet question everything. Though he uses Columbine as a jumping point (and displays some shocking footage of the killing spree that went on there), Moore is more interested in all forms of gun violence and the question that must then go after that: why are we as Americans so content to just shoot each other?
The answers don't come easily and that proves the film's strongest point. Without picking out specific persons of power to blame (be they the K-Mart CEO or Charleton Heston), the documentary leaps from one inflamatory point of investigation to another, all the while revealing in its - yes, scattershot - way that what sets us as a country apart (other than our incredibly high murder rate) is our addiction to fear.
Though it may grow muddier from time to time, Moore's movie is scathing and heartrending. His ambush-interviews of Dick Clark and Heston prove powerfully telling of our gun culture and his hopped-up frenzied use of montages - some that explore the various political assasinations carried out by our government, others that serve as reminders of our latent attitudes towards gun sales - is hilarious and insightful. Ultimately though, insight takes a back seat to the real force behind Columbine: honest curiousity at what makes such a bloodthirsty culture tick. With guns blazing, Michael Moore is out to find the answer, both as a documentarian and a humorist.
Well versed in rabble-rousing theatrics, Bowling for Columbine, surely proves controversial and provocative but its message, the power that it wields with such gangly force, lies in its simple, probing nature. In its final climactic moment - the interview with NRA President Charles Heston that ends in him storming off - Moore gets you on his wavelength. Those final minutes tear away all preconceived notions of Michael Moore as a politician masquerading as a filmmaker and result in a culminating moment of pure, unrelenting, humanity and sadness. Afterwards I couldn't help to think: how many of those moments have been created by bullets in a haze of very un-American terror?
The Road: A
In a desolate corner of the world, one imagines that Cormac McCarthy would be in heaven. Of course, his entire body of work – from All the Pretty Horses to No Country for Old Men – is indicative of his vivid power as an empath of the dead and dying. Nowhere else this year, or perhaps in many a year, will one feel the full power of his craft as in The Road.
The story is spare and ripe with poeticism. A father and his son wander through America searching for the coast. They head to the coast for reasons unknown and the world they straggle through is unlike anything else that has been written in a long, long while. Ash flies and piles in huge drifts that cover the countryside. Nearly everyone is dead and all of the vegetation along with it. Houses and cities have been burned (and in the greatest line of the book, a couple sits sipping wine watching the collapse of civilization) and the other survivors can be hardly called such. For those that are encountered they are all hungry, desperate for even a taste of food. Their food isn't of the natural variety, unless of course you think human flesh is natural. This is a world that isn't teetering on the edge of destruction, waiting for a savior (as in Stephen King's The Stand), it has fallen down that dark deep well of Oblivion and has festered there, sprouting a Hell on Earth.
Stripped of those unnecessary functions of writing – such as dialogue quotes and proper time and place as well as "proper exposition" – McCarthy has attained the visionary power of a prophet. On every page his powerful voice, vast catastrophic vocabulary, and unassailable position as Master Stylist of Cataclysm, all add up to a supremely unshakable imagining of the World at World's End; it has exhaled its last gasp and is now merely waiting for those final moments as the light slips away. And yet in this creeping darkness, hope. It is because in a most wise decision, McCarthy turns the entire focus of his idea to spin about the relationship that exists between the man and the boy, the parent and the child. Here is where his poetic pondering makes the most sense and the most indelible impression. It is the final piece of a puzzle that when arranged, paints a picture of society that is unsettling - and thinly hopeful - in every iota.
The final scene is restrained and a tad ingratiating in its quiet musing but it may be the novel's only flaw. The sheer meteoric impact that his nightmare will make in your mind is alone worth the price of purchasing this book. Be warned though: there is madness in the corners of this writer's midnight-black world.
Against The Day: A
As a reader - nay, a critic even - who took nearly four months in which to finish Thomas Pynchon's byzantine, labyrinnthe, massive novel Against The Day, I feel I stand on pretty good grounds in which to state: this is a difficult book. Filled with vocabulary that requires you to be both sharp and current, multi-national language usage (some of which, I'm sure, is purposefully incorrect), and references to a myriad of concepts ranging from the mystical to the mathematical - none of which date farther forward in the world timeline than the 1920's - the author is practically begging you to be at some point so frustrated with his book that you will leave it to gather dust on a shelf somewhere far, far away. In fact he would be the first to say that the reader is forewarned in picking up his book.
They should know of course, having had some previous experience with Mason & Dixon, The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow, that Pynchon is famous for his incredibly dense, incredibly intellectual, incredibly murky writing. However, what he is also famous for (to those that bother to lift the heavy burden entailed, both physically and metaphorically, by picking up one of his novels) is his hilariously ridiculous humor, rapid fire exchanges, and those moments of brilliance so insightful they will make you wish he were a less difficult writer.
In his latest offering he takes on a subject perhaps more sprawling than nearly any of his other targets. He chronicles the lives of nearly a dozen characters over the course of roughly twenty-five years (those being 1893 to 1918). Each of his many creations does wildly different things - there are baloonists, spies, bisexuals, tranvestities, mystics, psychics, brothers, fighters, and capitalists - and yet they manage to converge on each other at times so random and constant that to say Pynchon is mocking Fate would be putting it lightly. But it isn't just Fate he is mocking. He's also poking fun at various styles of writing, historical accuracy, and all of current American politics. But as much as there is humor here (and trust me, Pynchon's stabs and parodies of life and culture are spot-on and immensely side-splitting) there is also a surprising amount of power and insight. You may be laughing wildly at such activities as "Anarchist Golf" and yet Thomas Pynchon's dialogue-free passage on the Great Chicago Fire will leave you speechless.
His stories are themselves also alternately theatrical, theoretical, fanatical, and grim. Here, a few samples: a trio of brothers try over a course of years to kill the rich man that killed their father, a girl goes off to see the world (and maybe the mother she never knew that is purportedly lurking some therewithin), several different revolutions occur, a sodomitical British Spy goes cavorting about the precarious political scene of Europe right before the Great War (and manages to be entangled in a threesome of both man and woman that provides a deliriously romantic near-end vision of sex and heart), a group of skyship pilots termed the Chums of Chance go flying to the sky doing nice and Boy Scout-y things, and a detective first chased out of Chicago finds himself enlisted by a mystical "darkness fighting" organization in order to satisfy demands made on him by people who may not even exist.
I feel it is necessary to say again that undertaking this book requires patience, for the author's endless indulgence in, well, indulgence, as well as enormous amounts of heart and mindpower. And yet if one is willing to undertake this ordeal, they will discover a work of near literary brilliance that has done what no other book I have read has done to date: envisioned the world full of menace and apathy and that the great tragedies that were to follow would merely grow out of that. In fact the greatest of world tragedies here is everyone's mad descent into a hellish and bloodthirsty system. That system is capitalism and to Pynchon, a wily liberal anarchist in his own right, it is the ultimate fall from grace. Yet he ends his creation on a hopeful note, suggesting that we need only to fall in love to start flying towards grace.
They should know of course, having had some previous experience with Mason & Dixon, The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow, that Pynchon is famous for his incredibly dense, incredibly intellectual, incredibly murky writing. However, what he is also famous for (to those that bother to lift the heavy burden entailed, both physically and metaphorically, by picking up one of his novels) is his hilariously ridiculous humor, rapid fire exchanges, and those moments of brilliance so insightful they will make you wish he were a less difficult writer.
In his latest offering he takes on a subject perhaps more sprawling than nearly any of his other targets. He chronicles the lives of nearly a dozen characters over the course of roughly twenty-five years (those being 1893 to 1918). Each of his many creations does wildly different things - there are baloonists, spies, bisexuals, tranvestities, mystics, psychics, brothers, fighters, and capitalists - and yet they manage to converge on each other at times so random and constant that to say Pynchon is mocking Fate would be putting it lightly. But it isn't just Fate he is mocking. He's also poking fun at various styles of writing, historical accuracy, and all of current American politics. But as much as there is humor here (and trust me, Pynchon's stabs and parodies of life and culture are spot-on and immensely side-splitting) there is also a surprising amount of power and insight. You may be laughing wildly at such activities as "Anarchist Golf" and yet Thomas Pynchon's dialogue-free passage on the Great Chicago Fire will leave you speechless.
His stories are themselves also alternately theatrical, theoretical, fanatical, and grim. Here, a few samples: a trio of brothers try over a course of years to kill the rich man that killed their father, a girl goes off to see the world (and maybe the mother she never knew that is purportedly lurking some therewithin), several different revolutions occur, a sodomitical British Spy goes cavorting about the precarious political scene of Europe right before the Great War (and manages to be entangled in a threesome of both man and woman that provides a deliriously romantic near-end vision of sex and heart), a group of skyship pilots termed the Chums of Chance go flying to the sky doing nice and Boy Scout-y things, and a detective first chased out of Chicago finds himself enlisted by a mystical "darkness fighting" organization in order to satisfy demands made on him by people who may not even exist.
I feel it is necessary to say again that undertaking this book requires patience, for the author's endless indulgence in, well, indulgence, as well as enormous amounts of heart and mindpower. And yet if one is willing to undertake this ordeal, they will discover a work of near literary brilliance that has done what no other book I have read has done to date: envisioned the world full of menace and apathy and that the great tragedies that were to follow would merely grow out of that. In fact the greatest of world tragedies here is everyone's mad descent into a hellish and bloodthirsty system. That system is capitalism and to Pynchon, a wily liberal anarchist in his own right, it is the ultimate fall from grace. Yet he ends his creation on a hopeful note, suggesting that we need only to fall in love to start flying towards grace.
Employee of the Month: C+
Dane Cook, with his quick wit and scruffy mug, makes one charming blue-collar worker. What he doesn't make is a good cashier. At least, not good enough to beat the resident guru on the subject, Vince (Dax Shepard), and win the daffy "slut" who would sleep with any Employee of the Month - played of course by Jessica Simpson in a flight of geez whiz ma, I am smart enough to mock myself!. The story, as you can tell, hinges on alot of disbelief. In fact, you'll have to swallow alot but I tell - surprisingly - that it may be worth it.
Amy (the aforementioned Jessica Simpson) has a history of sleeping with each of her store's best employees. Her latest conquest has yet to be determined since she's just been tranferred but don't think that she doesn't have options! Both Zach (Dane Cook), the apathetic "cool guy", and Vince have their eye on her. The problem is that Vince has been EotM for the last 17 months and there is no way he's stopping now (nor should he since he's so insanely good at what he does). But you see, Zach has friends and a wierd grandma on his side. He can't lose! And of course what he wins is his pride back (from some vague and stupid economic tragedy that befell him 10 years ago) and the girl.
As movies go, I have seen "meet-cute-try-and-get-the-girl" romantic comedies that are better and far worse. Employee of the Month falls squarely in the middle. Why? Because the movie is funny and sweet...at least most of the time.
Directed by Greg Coolidge, the film turns the gargantuan Super Club into a world of wonder (opera singing janitors you say? indeed!). And the people that populate the world - Dax Shepard, Andy Dick, Tim Bagley, the midget from "Seinfeld" - are on the wavelength of such strangeness, even if the movie isn't always with them. It should have been, since they earn the majority of the laughs.
This romantic fable though is too cutesy for it's own good, too earthbound (and too stupid, as when it tries to ascertain the level of "cool idiocy" that was Pedro's claim to fame). In the end it's too average, too rote. I've seen a dozen like it and more that are better. As laughs go, it mildly delivers, and I had no trouble blowing 100 minutes watching it, but next time set the store in Oz. Still...Andy Dick is hilarious.
Before Sunrise: A
What is love? What is a soulmate exactly? Is it a stranger you happen to bump into on the street while running late to a meeting? Is is that fling you had back in college with that professor who so shifted your world that you've never viewed life the same since? Or is it simply in those moments when everything you are, everything you have, hangs on a few words from another person's mouth? Richard Linklater goes so far as to answer those questions and his answer is so powerfully romantic and winning that the very thought of it still sends me swooning.
The "story" is of two people: Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French college student. I use air quotes because there is little resembling a conventional plot in this movie. In fact, there are rarely any more than two people at the focus of the screen at any given time. It is because Linklater, in a bold and refreshing move, is conjuring a visionary film based solely on the conversation between two perfect strangers as they wander through the night-life of Vienna. It can't last though (Jesse has a plane to catch and Celine must ride back to Paris) but for those brief minutes they have with each other they establish a rapturous connection and we as the audience are invited to share in it.
Ethan Hawke, in a feat of off-beat brilliance, establishes the tone of his character from the first moment. He is a flawed cynic: he can't quite think that love is dead and yet he has witnessed it being shot. His nervous torrents of soliloquiy are an open door into the psyche of human being, not a caricature. Likewise, Julie Delpy sculpts a portrait of womanhood that is cleansing in its bright-eyed vision. And as they walk, banter, and quip together, the camera follows in long flows of movement. Though perhaps this is a stroke of defiance against traditional romance movies, nothing here feels contrived. It is as lovely as a dream (and so if it requires a small amount of belief suspension, by all means). As explorations go of human contact, there are few so natural and so insightful.
Filled with hope and whimsy, but never naievete, Before Sunrise is a beckoning from one man of exceptional skill to his audience. He is asking us to ask ourselves, what is love? He already knows the answer and by expressing it so seductively, with such fresh normality, he has delivered a glorious triumph.
The "story" is of two people: Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French college student. I use air quotes because there is little resembling a conventional plot in this movie. In fact, there are rarely any more than two people at the focus of the screen at any given time. It is because Linklater, in a bold and refreshing move, is conjuring a visionary film based solely on the conversation between two perfect strangers as they wander through the night-life of Vienna. It can't last though (Jesse has a plane to catch and Celine must ride back to Paris) but for those brief minutes they have with each other they establish a rapturous connection and we as the audience are invited to share in it.
Ethan Hawke, in a feat of off-beat brilliance, establishes the tone of his character from the first moment. He is a flawed cynic: he can't quite think that love is dead and yet he has witnessed it being shot. His nervous torrents of soliloquiy are an open door into the psyche of human being, not a caricature. Likewise, Julie Delpy sculpts a portrait of womanhood that is cleansing in its bright-eyed vision. And as they walk, banter, and quip together, the camera follows in long flows of movement. Though perhaps this is a stroke of defiance against traditional romance movies, nothing here feels contrived. It is as lovely as a dream (and so if it requires a small amount of belief suspension, by all means). As explorations go of human contact, there are few so natural and so insightful.
Filled with hope and whimsy, but never naievete, Before Sunrise is a beckoning from one man of exceptional skill to his audience. He is asking us to ask ourselves, what is love? He already knows the answer and by expressing it so seductively, with such fresh normality, he has delivered a glorious triumph.
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: B+
In his domineeringly post-modern ironic way (there is a twinkle in his eye from the very moment that he starts in to one of his egomaniacle impersonations), Will Ferrell is a truly commanding stage presence. His performances may occasionally misfire (Anchorman, I'm looking at you), but his inner-spirit of jacked-up free-wheeling comedy shines through in nearly every frame of his movies. With his latest, and most blatant, star vehicle Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell has perhaps made the greatest movie of his career...or at least the funniest.
Written by Ferrell and directed by Anchorman header Adam McKay, Talladega Nights is a nearly hypnotic satire that in its very stabs of American Goodness, worships it. The movie succeeds because at the end, through all the ridiculous hoo-blah, you are rooting for Ricky Bobby, a NASCAR driver who Ferrell plays with all his old-quirks and some blazing new passion.
Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) is at the top of the NASCAR ladder (here it's overgrown from a mere minor American Sport to a near cultist fascination). He has a smoking hot wife (Leslie Bibb), two "adorable" (read: gutter mouth poets) kids, and a best friend (John C. Reilly) who is more than content to let him win every single race. What threatens to usurp him from his throne? The answer is two-pronged - and perfectly suited to an age where The O.C. has made irony ironic. It is a gay Frenchman (Sacha Baron Cohen) who knocks Bobby down to size but it also Ricky Bobby's inner-awakening, his veins are slowly coming to truly pulse with the old-fashioned American-ism!, that proves troublesome. The one-two punch is too much and Ricky Bobby leaves racing a sad sack of a man who's ever increasing bag of troubles are pulled of with sly panache by McKay.
Though his redemption is the plot of the movie, it his the sense that nothing here is truly being mocked - save for the utterly fake spirit of NASCAR coolness - that is the film's feel-good triumph. In the spirit of a Christopher Guest spoof, McKay and Ferrell are as much in love with their almost-always-funny jokes (and here in this oversized man-boy playground of plastic consumerism, everything is joke material for a good satire) as they are the impassioned hearts of their characters. In truly inspired trick after trick the movie manages to one-up itself in a dizzying uproar of laughter and glee. You may leave wishing to have tasted a more complete flake of a comedic treat, but I was pleased they took the trouble to bake it at all.
Written by Ferrell and directed by Anchorman header Adam McKay, Talladega Nights is a nearly hypnotic satire that in its very stabs of American Goodness, worships it. The movie succeeds because at the end, through all the ridiculous hoo-blah, you are rooting for Ricky Bobby, a NASCAR driver who Ferrell plays with all his old-quirks and some blazing new passion.
Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) is at the top of the NASCAR ladder (here it's overgrown from a mere minor American Sport to a near cultist fascination). He has a smoking hot wife (Leslie Bibb), two "adorable" (read: gutter mouth poets) kids, and a best friend (John C. Reilly) who is more than content to let him win every single race. What threatens to usurp him from his throne? The answer is two-pronged - and perfectly suited to an age where The O.C. has made irony ironic. It is a gay Frenchman (Sacha Baron Cohen) who knocks Bobby down to size but it also Ricky Bobby's inner-awakening, his veins are slowly coming to truly pulse with the old-fashioned American-ism!, that proves troublesome. The one-two punch is too much and Ricky Bobby leaves racing a sad sack of a man who's ever increasing bag of troubles are pulled of with sly panache by McKay.
Though his redemption is the plot of the movie, it his the sense that nothing here is truly being mocked - save for the utterly fake spirit of NASCAR coolness - that is the film's feel-good triumph. In the spirit of a Christopher Guest spoof, McKay and Ferrell are as much in love with their almost-always-funny jokes (and here in this oversized man-boy playground of plastic consumerism, everything is joke material for a good satire) as they are the impassioned hearts of their characters. In truly inspired trick after trick the movie manages to one-up itself in a dizzying uproar of laughter and glee. You may leave wishing to have tasted a more complete flake of a comedic treat, but I was pleased they took the trouble to bake it at all.
Breach: B+
I could spend this entire review detailing to you the various ins-and-outs of Billy Ray's linear jolt of spy thriller entertainment but there isn't much to say. Coming off of his well-recieved Shattered Glass, writer-director Ray has turned down the showy scimatics of a traditional popcorn fest for the slowburn of a lightning-rod drama or a searing thriller and succeeds at evoking niether of those in full measure. His tersely "dramatic" close-ups and obligatory "explosions" from the various agents at the FBI (played alternately with varying levels of candor by Laura Linney, Ryan Phillipe, and Dennis Haysbert) are about as innovative as a coffee-maker...or fire. It must be said that at the very least he gives the movie pacing. Yet it is the villian of the movie, Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), who provides the needed atmosphere of disquieting nihilism, unchained id, and sociopathic intelligence that sends the film flying upwards from by-the-numbers to edge-of-your-seat.
Chris Cooper used to be an actor I thought I knew. His turn in American Beauty was predictable (and predictably caustic) but nowhere in his resume is there a hint that he could do something like what he does here. Hanssen, an American intelligence officer who is being tailed by Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillipe) for being a "sexual deviant" (read: Soviet abetter), is given shades of a pathetic repressed beauracrat plus the snivelling snap of a Will & Grace-esque Jack. And on occasion he's so unpredictable that his every breath seems wracked with barely-held mania. Cross that with his hard line conservative politics and what results is something like Archie Bunker gone nuts; A man possessed of a vitriolic disposition so laughable in its quirks that by the end you haven't even realized he has truly terrified you.
Perhaps though it isn't so astounding for Chris Cooper to do something like this (surely to be one of the finest performances all year). One could even theorize he has been building to this his entire career and his one man hurricane force - his face paunchy and his eyes drowning in sadness, smarts, and self-righteousness - is the reward.
Without the energy of Cooper the film goes lax since the other actors seem almost to be in another, more rote film. Laura Linney fills perfectly those roles for which there really is no character. She stands there, grimaces cynically, and occasionally shows off a witty side. Ryan Phillipe on the other end exudes a singularly naieve, impatient power and almost manages to stand up against Agent Hanssen. Almost. I wish that Billy Ray had managed to create a more fully developed film from the supporting cast but then the question inevitably arises: without the director's narrow-minded focus on Hanssen, would Breach be such a breathless thrill every time Cooper tears through the screen? Maybe but then Chris Cooper would have less spotlight to shine in.
Chris Cooper used to be an actor I thought I knew. His turn in American Beauty was predictable (and predictably caustic) but nowhere in his resume is there a hint that he could do something like what he does here. Hanssen, an American intelligence officer who is being tailed by Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillipe) for being a "sexual deviant" (read: Soviet abetter), is given shades of a pathetic repressed beauracrat plus the snivelling snap of a Will & Grace-esque Jack. And on occasion he's so unpredictable that his every breath seems wracked with barely-held mania. Cross that with his hard line conservative politics and what results is something like Archie Bunker gone nuts; A man possessed of a vitriolic disposition so laughable in its quirks that by the end you haven't even realized he has truly terrified you.
Perhaps though it isn't so astounding for Chris Cooper to do something like this (surely to be one of the finest performances all year). One could even theorize he has been building to this his entire career and his one man hurricane force - his face paunchy and his eyes drowning in sadness, smarts, and self-righteousness - is the reward.
Without the energy of Cooper the film goes lax since the other actors seem almost to be in another, more rote film. Laura Linney fills perfectly those roles for which there really is no character. She stands there, grimaces cynically, and occasionally shows off a witty side. Ryan Phillipe on the other end exudes a singularly naieve, impatient power and almost manages to stand up against Agent Hanssen. Almost. I wish that Billy Ray had managed to create a more fully developed film from the supporting cast but then the question inevitably arises: without the director's narrow-minded focus on Hanssen, would Breach be such a breathless thrill every time Cooper tears through the screen? Maybe but then Chris Cooper would have less spotlight to shine in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
