jet fighter man

2009-04-13T14:59:00.004-05:00

Broken English etc

2009-01-25T23:08:00.000-06:00

Broken English (2007, Zoe Cassavetes)
This one came as a real surprise to me. To me it's about the purest kind of "romantic comedy" you're likely to get. And I hesitate to use that description because what romance there is, and the comedy, comes directly from the feelings of life. It's incredibly accurate about the way people experience feeling, and it's anchored by two great performances by Parker Posey and Melvil Poupaud. It has similarities to "Lost in Translation" and "Before Sunset" in its adult sense of longing, but it's more earthbound than either of those -- Posey, in particular, is a character who reveals the desperation and loneliness inherent in dating. Some of the film's best strengths are in how it understands the power games that people play -- the little things they say and do to change who holds the "power" in a conversation or relationship. (When, out in a grocery store with Poupaud, Posey runs into a male friend who wants to get together, as Poupaud listens on.) It's a strong statement on the feelings a person can give you, and the loss and confusion it inspires. Poupaud's the much simpler partner of the two, while Posey frantically needs to know whether or not individual moments "mean" something or not (and needs confirmation from her partner either way).

The House Bunny (2008, Fred Wolf)
There's nothing offensive or problematic about the movie from a moral or philosophic standpoint, but that doesn't make it any more entertaining as a light comedy. What few points it makes are conventional ones about "being yourself." The gem quality is of course Anna Faris, the dopiest comedienne since Goldie Hawn or Elaine May. (The physical humor of one of the other actresses has its charms, too.) As a vehicle for Faris it's not quite up to her level, but it doesn't stunt her either. But I long for Faris to be given more demanding material -- she perfected the stoner-doofus role in Gregg Araki's "Smiley Face."

Frost/Nixon (2008, Ron Howard)
About as good as Hollywood historical dramas get, and to our benefit it focuses mostly on acting between two people (although it may work better on the stage). Frank Langella is a towering force and no actor can stand up to him, and his version of Nixon is that Shakespearean thing of a flawed, tragic hero. (The reminiscences that serve as exposition point the movie in the direction of being a topical drama that's more concerned with business than being human, though.) I don't think the easiness of the movie allows Nixon to be explored as thoroughly and deeply as could be possible, but as a light history lesson it makes for decent entertainment.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008, David Fincher)
At its best -- that is to say the opening parts -- it resembles a Jean-Pierre Jeunet fantasy. But Fincher, seemingly trying to combine "The Great Gatsby" and "Forrest Gump," is too earthbound a director to fully let fly with his fantasy. The second half of the film drags, and the slowness doesn't provide deepness or reflection. Some of Fincher's touches have inventiveness to them, like the way a character continually tells the story of how he was hit by lightning on multiple occasions and how the occurrences are shown to us in grainy, old-timey footage for comic effect. But the cleverness of the story -- a man who ages backwards but whose love life still manages to dovetail with that of a young dancer, played by Cate Blanchett -- never fulfills itself into something either emotionally grand or as something with genuine insights into the nature of love -- or aging. (Cate Blanchett's performance as her own older self is so mannered that even if Fincher did have something noteworthy to say about aging it would be hindered by Blanchett's look-at-me performance.)

Compared to his other movies you can admire Fincher's less showy approach here, but he hasn't brought any kind of insight or feeling with him to replace his formerly over-the-top directorial shenanigans. Brad Pitt's work, at least when he's only supplying a heavily make-up'd face on another person's body, is maybe the best of his career -- but it's hard knowing whether it's his, the stand-in's, or the benefit of computer technology. When he assumes his own body he's less effective -- his body movement and voice don't have the strangeness or the sadness that makes his earlier segments interesting. Blanchett's problem is the inverse: She's so luminescent as a young woman that when she's resigned to dying in bed Fincher has short-circuited her natural grace.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007, Alex Holdridge)
I think Alex Holdridge compromises his own vision with some overly comedic touches that don't ring true when compared to the rest of his film -- like a crazy ex-boyfriend -- but at its best the film is an entertaining little movie about the disappointment inherent in our age of disconnection. Holdridge's film does bear similarities to Richard Linklater's love couplet, not just because it's about similar subject matter but because he believes in the light romance that he's telling. What gives the film a little weight is how he doesn't shy away from the feelings of patheticness that come with having to meet lovers online instead of in person, not to mention the first steps towards getting to know someone who you don't know at all. Although it's similarly filmed in black and white it doesn't have the fashionable irony of Jim Jarmusch or Hal Hartley -- when it's funny it's in a direct way, like when one character tells another to wear condoms because his balls are "full of green cards." What makes the drama work is that the characters don't sweep each other off their feet -- they get mad at each other and make up, all within the first night of meeting.

The Puffy Chair (2005, Duplass brothers)
This feature by the Duplass brothers really blew me away. It's such an amazing depiction of a handful of people who are as cleanly and deeply portrayed as any in the movies. (The way Mark Duplass and his girlfriend use babytalk to mask their embarrassment and discomfort.) It's a movie about the tenuous threads that keep people connected and the things we do to destroy those threads -- our obsession with unnecessary gadgets; our ignoring of other people; the way we misunderstand others' best intentions. I can't imagine why someone would criticize this movie for lacking an obvious visual flair when it touches on so many fascinating experiences of life. (Like how we will nonchalantly lie to others and then be furious when others lie to us.) The couple in the film, the frail connection they have, is enough to maintain a film, but the Duplass' also introduce us to Mark's hippie brother Rhett, a character so doofy that our initial reaction is to write him off -- but you can't write him off; to do so would be to reject his complicated actions. When he says he loves a girl he just met, you're not sure whether to be touched or whether to laugh at him. (In a Will Ferrell comedy this would be a punchline of patheticness.) But Rhett's irrational actions make the characters forget their obsession with ultimately inconsequential details (does an artifact couch -- a symbol -- really matter, when you should be reconnecting with your parents?). I've heard this movie referred to as solipsistic, but it couldn't be further from that: its focus on minutia isn't to ignore a bigger world, but to emphasize the uniqueness and the details that we take for granted in our individual lives.

Baghead (2008, Duplass brothers)
I was a huge fan of the Duplass' previous film "The Puffy Chair," and while "Baghead" isn't as immediately mind-blowing as that film it's still a rich, demanding experience. At first it feels as if the Duplass' have moved from intermingling minutia into social critiques, and in some cases they have -- they offer a skewering of the banal questions at film festivals that make you wonder whether we're engaged with the art we watch or only interested in the trivia details of production. When a filmmaker writes off scripts by asking, "Is there a script in real life?" one of our characters scoffs at the pretension of the line -- but it would be a serious detriment to take him at his laugh, since the entire movie follows with proving that way of thinking. (How the characters surprise and shock each other -- that's the element of it that's a horror movie or a comedy, not in the usual way.) If you view it as a story it may be predictable, but its value is in the tones of voice and the way characters try to manipulate each other (without the filmmaker trying to manipulate the audience). The acting by everyone involved is up to the wonderfully specific standards that the Duplass' have set, but Greta Gerwig by nature of maybe just her genetics is particularly fascinating. (But the other woman uses some amazing tones of voice.)

Sound and Fury (2000, Josh Aronson)
Like a human variant of the ethicist Jonathan Glover's book "Choosing Children," this film offers an example of the cochlear implant dilemma in the deaf community. Does implanting deaf children take them out of the deaf community? Should they be taught to embrace their deafness, when so many deaf individuals have succeeded in life? Or is it child abuse to neglect implanting children with a device that can partially correct a handicap that can burden a life? When deaf parents are worried that implanting their deaf children with cochlear implants means that their own lives would have been unsuccessful by comparison, you understand their hurt. But you also understand when people urge them not to let their children remain handicapped purely to keep the deaf community alive. The questions this film raises about identity and moral obligations to help our children are terrifically involving, an example of film broaching the area of personal ethics.

The Last Mistress (2008, Catherine Breillat)
Fitting into Breillat's overall oeuvre rather well, "The Last Mistress" is her latest mixture of blood, tears, and sex. A commingling of two fiery, hot and unlikely lovers (he views her as "ugly" at first), the affair within the film proves the Joyce Carol Oates aphorism that love combined with hate is more powerful than love (or hate). Argento's particular brand of unpredictability goes well with Breillat's temperamental nature, and Aattou is nothing less than extraordinary, particularly when he's filmed in close-up in a discussion with his wife's grandmother's questioning him. Breillat's vision of sex continues to be one of the most tactile and amoral -- and sensitive.

Into Great Silence (2005, Philip Groning)
The reviews for "Into Great Silence" seem stuck between either rhapsodizing over the images as if the film was a travelogue, or pontificating about its length. To get that out of the way: It has some arresting images, and it is indeed very long. But I doubt that either of those points were the point of the film, which seems to me much more rooted, simply, in an approximation of what it means to live a life of solitude and near silence. There are so many interesting avenues that that opens up for us that to focus on length or visuals seems wholly beside the point. The documentary is not a history or an explanation of why the monks do what they do, but a heady chunk of example of them doing what they do.

The slowness, repetition, and lack of external influence like narration helps to slow down our circadian rhythm, but it should be said that viewing of the film should be done when attentive. (To fully appreciate slowness you should be wide awake.) The film is a monumental document of a dwindling way of life, but more importantly it brings us into the act of doing. The questions the film brings up are ones like, Is this a valuable use of one's time, for the rest of your life? (Surely living a monastic life could be beneficial for a short period, in how it would influence regular life after the fact.) It makes you wonder if these highly disciplined and devoted individuals, supposedly worshipping in the name of a higher power, might be better used in the service of people in need. And it makes you ask if a monastic life isn't an inherently selfish one -- depriving yourself not just of human interaction, but refuting the existing tangible society and not contributing to it.

Of course the other side is that these are a brave few who limit themselves so much and have their lives pared down to such essentials that they prove how unnecessary the accessories of modern life are. When on rare occasions the monks do interact, laugh, and do things as surprising as tobogganing (once a week I believe) you realize that their enjoyment of life is not humorless or one of scorn. (Interestingly, for the tobogganing footage, the director films it from afar, as if to let the monks enjoy their "free time" as much as possible.) Is the film slow, repetitious, and devoid of historical context and details? Yes. But it makes you think deeply about how a person can, or should, live their life. If that's not the aim of good art I don't know what is.

Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007, Joe Swanberg)
The biggest achievement of Swanberg's film must be the way he lets loose an inexplicable mess of emotions -- the way that Greta Gerwig falls apart, almost in slow-motion, when her boyfriend does a trick with an ice cube. An unexpected moment for a relationship to unravel, and throughout the film the problems people have in relationships aren't dramatic, they continue to be uncomfortably specific as in that scene. Swanberg's capturing of the late-20s generation comes across as quite accurate (even though I'm sure plenty of 20-somethings would hate to see themselves this way), but the best things about his film are his deeper observances -- like the way people kiss someone not to give in, but to escape from pain.

Wendy and Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)
The initial problem with "Wendy and Lucy" and films like it is that it requires a series of bad things to happen to a character so that they find themselves in a hopeless position. (They have to be caught stealing, lose their dog, and have their car break down.) But getting those narrative roadblocks out of the way, Reichardt's film is a rather gentle view of America. Williams never greets the world with animosity. The manager of a store she steals from is reluctant to call the police (but begrudgingly acquiesces as it is their policy). A security guard follows his procedures in asking her to move her car, but offers suggestions for places she might go, and lets her use his cell phone. Perhaps the more accurate description would be that Reichardt's film has a gentle view of most Americans -- the American system, without being overtly criticized, is up for criticism simply by nature of this woman's situation. The store boy who catches her stealing comes off as a little bit of a prick, but he makes the apt observation that maybe people who can't afford dog food shouldn't have dogs. And yet the larger issue at stake is that how can we go on criticizing the less fortunate and not simultaneously note how the system is fixed? (You can't get an education without money; you can't get a job without an address; you can't get an address without money; you can't get money without a job.)

Team Picture (2008, Kentucker Audley)
I really found myself taken with this unassuming little movie. I loved the alternate ways of life that the film depicted, of the lead character choosing to live life in a different way (willfully choosing to not work for a while). When he quits his job, it's not a dramatic moment, not some major life decision, simply an act that comes from the fact that there are other ways he'd like to spend his time. I loved the light romance with a neighbor that comes when Kentucker Audley (also the director) fumbles his way into interacting with her. Nothing in the movie is underscored, and yet its pleasant amiability (which shouldn't be mistaken for frivolity) maintains subtle observances of life, like how dissimilar Audley and his sports apparel store-managing father seem. Only later do we learn that it's his step-dad, and when we see his biological father the casualness with which Audley lives his life (short shorts, flip flops, unshaven face) makes a little more sense. But it's never a wacky, bizarre indie, nor does it have contempt for any of its characters. (Imagine that: A movie about slackers in the south that's neither fashionably quirky nor hateful.) There's a difference between Audley and his step-father, but we're never meant to laugh at this aging jock; he's understanding when his step-son informs him of his decision to quit working at the store. What makes the film so pleasant, aside from Audley's winning personality (and beauty) is the combo of his interest in the less dramatic moments in life, and his character's slight beguiled feeling in the face of it.

Reprise (2006, Joachim Trier)
Though I found it offputting at first -- it seemed to me too focused on telling a story rather than delving deeply into its characters or ideas -- eventually it won me over. Trier definitely has a sense for visual ingenuity and visual cues -- he can indicate different things with a gesture as simple as air-quotes -- and a talent for creating friction when characters interact. I didn't find Trier's technicalities to be gimmicky -- I think he's made a genuine statement on frustrated youth -- but I think he could go even deeper.

Damned If You Don't (1987, Su Friedrich)
At first you don't quite know where you are. You're not sure if Friedrich is going to give you a revised history of lesbianism in the movies, or if she wants to provide a commentary for the images that enticed lesbians when they were young. The film does contain commentary on the act of viewership, both in the way a woman watches "Black Narcissus" on TV as we watch her doing so, and in the broader scope of Friedrich populating her film with voiceover reminiscences where we can hear the collaboration as the speakers mess up their words or think of new ways of saying something as they are coached to either continue narrating or incorporate their new thought into what they're telling us. It's in this way that Friedrich includes the creative process within the film, and also how she requires that we not get "lost" in the film and remain attentive at all times.

Friedrich's films are not so much narrative as an intermingling of forms -- documentary, fiction, reenactment. They are also demanding aesthetic experiences. I have warmed to her vision more with this film than I did with her previous "The Ties That Bind," which to me was too repetitious and not as wide-ranging or sensual as this film. As I ask less that her films adhere to traditional forms, I welcome them more as they continue to twist and weave as themselves. Her films are preeminent examples of time in film that asks that you stop and consider, to appreciate different and longer experiences, as with an amazing sequence in which a nun watches a dolphin twirl and writhe in an aquarium.

The film becomes increasingly more powerful as it progresses, as elliptical sequences gain an importance when continued later (picking out an artwork; sewing onto it). We begin to appreciate the oceanic waves of subtlety and evasive meanings as Friedrich's themes and observances come together -- but never in a finite way. Friedrich focuses less on the lesbianism of institutions (nunnery) as she does on the more personal process of sex as a tactile and spiritual discovery (a scene without sound). The film's title evokes a complicated rebellious streak, which is beautifully accented as the closing song begins to play: "Break It Up."

Eternal Summer, Un Deux Trois Soleil, Forgotten, W, Veronica Guerin, Burn After Reading, Animal Factory, Croupier, Quantum of Solace, I Shot Andy War

2008-11-30T16:23:00.010-06:00

Eternal Summer (2006, Leste Chen)
This lovely Taiwanese film pleasantly brought to mind memories of being 12 and not quite understanding why I was so drawn to that gorgeous Cowboy Junkies video for "Miles from Our Home," with the Asian boy who timidly wraps his arms around his friend as they speed around on a motorcycle. Like that mini-masterpiece, "Eternal Summer" follows two boys: the sensitive, unspeakably pretty Jonathan and the athletic Shane, who are put together at a young age so that the former can help the latter become a better student (they realize they make a good pair when their grades on an exam -- 67% and 33% -- make a perfect score). As teenagers, their friendship is beautifully detailed in the way Jonathan, despite his feelings to the contrary, pulls away from Shane, who doesn't understand why his best friend is becoming so sullen and inward. The film is fluidly directed, in narrative (occasionally giving itself over to emotion) and visual beauty, with bluish tints and careful compositions. About the only flaw is in the ending, when the music and earnestness of the dialogue becomes too much. But for the most part I was caught off guard by the maturity of the filmmaking.

Un Deux Trois Soleil (1993, Bertrand Blier)
My first foray into the films of Bertrand Blier, and if this film is any indication he must be one of the craziest directors around. The film is incredibly surreal and yet so without any kind of visual trickery, just a fragmented, peculiar way of telling a story about a girl, her lovers, and her parents -- they're portrayed at different stages of life by the same actors, without makeup, and it's often unclear what is literally happening to them and what is a remembrance. The film employs situations where characters talk to each other in one room that occupies both the present and the past, with both characters in different times. Many of the scenes are so downright inscrutable that I felt the film was like an exercise in Dadaist anarchy, albeit with painful childhood memories buried underneath.

The surreal scenes that make up the movie are abruptly integrated into the story, which plays cleanly and openly. (A large black woman revives a dead child who rests on her breasts; a homeowner befriends a boy burglar, who with wide eyes, ears that stick out, and a comically pronounced overbite resembles Nosferatu.) Some of the scenes in the film are simply funny in a quiet way, like how Marcello Mastroianni, as the girl's alcoholic father, keeps finding more and more street children trailing behind him, believing him to be their father. (There's another bold, funny diversion when Mastroianni can't find his apartment -- because teenagers have stolen the numbers and letters off the apartment block.)

The Forgotten (2004, Joseph Ruben)
Unfortunately "The Forgotten" eventually amounts to a run-of-the-mill Hollywood mystery, complete with a supernatural showdown in an abandoned factory. It's unfortunate because the first 20 minutes or so of are genuinely interesting, about a mother who has memories of a child that never existed. (As a symptom of a mother dealing with a miscarriage this could make for very rewarding and challenging material.) Then it shifts into a thriller where government officials and unmarked vehicles prowl around, and even then it's a serviceable throwaway. But when it gets to its third act, it's just the third section of increasing worseness -- it loses whatever skill or interest it's developed, proving further that Hollywood movies, particularly those made by for-hire directors, are incapable of finding a decent conclusion. That awful ending, with strange close-ups and odd angles, seems like it was directed by someone else entirely, since the interesting first section and the enjoyable second section aren't badly directed at all, and the use of music is effectively unsettling. The biggest shame may be in letting down a handful of fine actors: Gary Sinise, Dominic West, Alfre Woodward, even if Julianne Moore, wonderful that she is, manages to seep in some feeling here and there.

W (2008, Oliver Stone)
The comic tone of "W" may be necessary for audiences to be able to stomach a film about George W. Bush so soon, but that palatable tone is also what keeps the film from having the weight of Stone's other two presidential biographies, "JFK" and "Nixon." The all-star cast, as we've come to expect in Stone's films, rely on their combination of physical similarity and weightiness to come across as believable, and Josh Brolin, Richard Dreyfuss, and Toby Hughes are all quite fine in their roles. (Hughes, to me, seemed more interesting than the real Karl Rove.) Jeffrey Wright is an awfully fine actor, but his version of Colin Powell doesn't hit quite the right tone. But he's nowhere near as woefully out of it as Thandie Newton'sCondoleezza Rice, who drifts in and out of the movie muttering lines like she's crashing an SNL political parody.

Veronica Guerin (2003, Joel Schumacher)
For people who knew Veronica Guerin -- those readers of the Sunday Tribune -- the film of the same title should serve as a fine memorial of the woman, and the film works best on that level of a tribute to a folk hero. The film occasionally has some good, naturalistic interplay between Cate Blanchett and the ubiquitous Ciarin Hinds, and both actors are fine enough that their scenes together have feeling attached. (For an actress who can often seem gimmicky and technical, Blanchett, even with her prop Princess Diana haircut, plays her character openly.) While the movie documents the death of a journalist, and serves as a film example of the sad fact that many journalists are killed doing their jobs, it doesn't work much as a serious artwork on what it means to be human (aside from clichés like "I don't want to, I need to") or as good sociology or journalism that looks into why things happen the way they do. (For a death that came as a result of drug trafficking, there is relatively little in-depth questioning of the drug trade, and how her death might have been avoided; just politically-correct mourning and the banishment of drug dealers.) At best, it's a tribute. Then again, I imagine most people would have trouble not caring when a woman gets murdered by thugs.

Burn After Reading (2008, Coen brothers)
The clever conceit behind the film is that it's a shaggy dog story that knows it's a shaggy dog story and notes that within the film. But that simple self-awareness isn't enough to make an entertaining movie, and it's not a notion revolutionary enough to make it work simply as a conceit. The narrative is sometimes unclear, the character associations don't weave together complexly like they should. It might serve as a palate-cleanser after the Coen brothers' success with "No Country for Old Men," but it's not a successful movie in and of itself. Talented actors like Tilda Swinton are wasted, and the only real life the movie has comes from John Malkovich railing against morons and J.K. Simmons being flummoxed by what it all means. The long-standing criticism against the Coen brothers is that they look down on their characters. I'm not sure if that's true, but it's certainly true that they purposely write characters who aren't bright, and the laughter is meant to come from watching them act stupidly while the movie holds itself at a distance, in this case with a clever self-awareness that the buffoon characters themselves don't have. There's a big difference between that snottiness and the outrageous, brilliant stupidity of what the Farrelly brothers do. That the Coen brothers are more respected speaks largely to the holier-than-though attitude our culture likes to adopt (the same culture that drinks up a conceit movie as some kind of major achievement).

Animal Factory (2000, Steve Buscemi)
Essentially a slice-of-life prison drama, neither embellished with dramatics nor overdone with seediness or hopelessness. Buscemi gives a lot of time to marginalized actors -- Edward Furlong, Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, John Heard, Tom Arnold, and an early appearance by the singer Antony Hegarty -- and it's mostly a film by actors for those who appreciate them. In many ways (the music, the unobtrusive visuals) it bears similarities to a TV show like "The Wire," although Buscemi's film has more in common with a character study than that show's sociological insights. He gives an essentially honest portrayal of an older convict and a younger one, possibly influenced by John Cheever's "Falconer." Their relationship isn't sexual, but it is soulful, and that's what separates it from being a TV movie. (Although, ironically, TV shows -- the type that Buscemi has directed -- would serve to give the prison story more complexity by virtue of time.)

Croupier (1998, Mike Hodges)
I wouldn't call "Croupier" a noir, but it's close to the French approximations of noir that Jean-Pierre Melville made. Clive Owen isn't as beautiful as Alain Delon, and he doesn't look quite so hip in a hat, but he's trading on similar vibes. Mike Hodges is definitely interested in style, but that doesn't necessarily make it a fraudulent movie since the premise of the movie is style too -- the attitudes, quickness, and steadiness of being a card shark. It's not a gangster movie like "Casino," it's about a man who sort of lives by a code, in his case honesty, in a world where manipulation exists everywhere. Women hover around the picture but Owen's character isn't exactly a womanizer. Hodges is working with atmosphere -- voiceovers that come in between spoken dialogue, ominous music -- and on that level it largely works.

Quantum of Solace (2008, Marc Forster)
Following in the more brutally efficient manner of "Casino Royale," the latest Bond installment is much closer to conventional action pictures, in the way it uses violence as a means to solve problems, as opposed to wit, cunning, or other traits we would associate with being part of a British franchise. It loses the fun and glamour of Bond pictures as being examples of style, but on the other hand it's not laughable or jokey in any respect. The main problem with the film as a film is that its action sequences are edited in such a rapid fashion, and with such little visual coherence, that they become confusing and the opposite of thrilling. For real excitement, it's always more effective to hold back and show larger shots of dangerous action -- car chases where we see both cars, actors doing things without the safety net of editing -- and Marc Forster, who's never made an action picture before, thinks that making the edits fast will make the film more exciting. (People watch the Olympics to see one runner slowly take over another, not to see close-ups of a runner's thigh, followed by a rapid succession of scalloping feet.)

The other, less bothersome flaw is that the World Issues plot seems heavy-handed, and there are discussions about things and references to people that don't always match up, because they're just not significant enough. (The film partly makes use of the political points with a memorable death involving oil.) It's the actors that make the movie, and thankfully it's not all action. Mathieu Amalric makes for a fine, small, restrained villain who resembles a human being. But it's obviously Daniel Craig's show, and he mostly pulls the film off. I didn't necessarily believe he was doing anything he was doing for the reason the film suggested -- vengeance on behalf of his dead friend -- but, in the moment, his performance works, largely because of his graceful movement and his enigmatic, sheltered personality. He's equally at home in a fashion statement scene, wearing a black polo, sunglasses, and white pants, as he is in scenes that require him to leap off buildings and avoid getting smacked with an axe. He's the proper heir to Steve McQueen: believable, rough, and with star quality, but with a modern sense of devilishness, which is only more pronounced by his impossibly blue eyes.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996, Mary Harron)
No films can approximate the feel of the Warhol era better than his own films and those of Paul Morrissey. Those films have, decades later, retained a mysteriousness, beauty, and complexity that the documents we have now recounting the times fail to live up to. The images are so iconic and the DIY aesthetic so current that modern approximations seem false. As a story of the violent "feminist" who shot Andy Warhol, the film has a reason to exist. And the backdrop of the Warhol factory is given a little credibility thanks to Jared Harris' distant, wounded performance. But the film is also a little too glib and a little bit nasty. Since it's about an attempted murderess, that may be what Mary Harron was going for. But there's a deeper world in Warhol that we could have seen, when instead we've been given the marginalized world of one fringe psychotic.

Autism, Boy A, Visitor, Bugcrush, For the Bible Tells Me So, Married Life

2008-10-03T13:47:00.003-05:00

Autism: The Musical (2007, Tricia Regan)
Good documentaries do a few things, one of which is show you a world you may not be familiar with. To this end "Autism: The Musical" succeeds quite well, as it gives heartfelt, tough glimpses into the lives of a handful of autistic children and their families. (Incidentally it also educates: how some autistic children find eye-contact difficult, and how some can repeat what they hear but have a hard time making original statements.)

The moral and social value of the movie is such that it, like the best art, encourages empathy and feeling not just for people not like us, but for people not given the same privileges that we enjoy. There are times in the film where parents are passionate and angry (occasionally with each other), explaining the treatment their children receive by other people. We see how tough raising an autistic child can be on families; some relationships don't make it. But you also feel that if every family had a special needs child they may grow, gain empathy, and learn to love in more selfless ways because of it. (It's worth mentioning that while autism is a good umbrella for a group of people, like women or baseball players, each of the children have completely different personalities.)

One mother finds it appalling that her daughter is taught to wash dishes ("so she can sweep the floor at McDonald's") while another mother explains that if she can "crack" the autistic wall for even five minutes that means her child will progress five minutes further than where he was before. The most difficult moment may be when one mother muses that if her daughter outlives her, who in society will "value" her daughter the way she does?

The musical that the children participate in may not have the same artistic or entertainment value of one put on by normal-functioning children, but what it does is allow the children to have an opportunity to complete a task, collaborate in an artistic creation, allow their parents to see their children perform, and serve an as extra-curricular activity for children and parents to prepare for together. The end that the musical represents has a lot of value, but the road to getting there gives just as much.

It would seem callous to not mention that the film choked me up a number of times, but not because it was "happy" or "sad" so much as it showed complex situations and real human beings dealing with them. One symptom of autism is that children don't interact emotionally the same way normal-functioning children can. So it's completely without sentimentality -- and all the more affecting because of it -- when one child says to another that he's "smart," which prompts the other boy to respond, "I always wanted to hear that."

Boy A (2007, John Crowley)
Although it takes a sociological position of examining the adjustment period of a criminal released from prison, the movie takes the early position of sympathy for the boy. We, like the people familiar only with his new identity, become acutely aware of his past after we've already gotten to know him in the present; yes, grown to love him. It's a testament to the tremendous acting talent of Andrew Garfield that it never feels cliched or his character overly harried. As a boy who's been institutionalized during his formative years, he has chunks of identity and experience removed from him, and he with frenzy attempts to fill it in with sudden bursts of emotion. The new emotional feelings of having sex, of wanting it to be "right."

The filmmaking in large part attempts to be naturalistic. The problems are literal, society is dealt with somewhat plainly, the acting is "realistic." And while Peter Mullan is one of the most inherently believable actors alive, it's Garfield who imbues the film, performancewise, with the greatest shades of complexity. His is a character who is at a loss to express, constantly in fear of being revealed and torn apart by the inherent dishonesty in that contradiction. The movie's visuals occasionally give us something more than realism -- a poetic imagining near the end on a dock; some horrifying dreams throughout the film. It's already a fine, often beautiful look at a life getting past setbacks, and becomes more complex with the mob mentality and ostracization.

If there's a flaw in the movie it's the predictability of some of the actions. While it's understandable that Mullan's forgotten son would be offended at being seemingly replaced by a recovering criminal, it seems almost too simple to have Boy A be outed by that simple revenge, although it's a cruel act done with the same ambivalence as the cruelty the boy's friend inflicted on others in youth. It's an indictment of the media's callousness in destroying lives, and how simply the social work people do can come undone by an outside citizen.

The Visitor (2007, Thomas McCarthy)
Although the style is perhaps more low-key, "The Visitor" bears a resemblance to the American social realism of a movie like "The Pursuit of Happyness," both movies trying to bring awareness to social phenomena in America by way of character studies. The film is a microcosm of race relations and a portrait of the diversity of backgrounds in America, and in New York in particular. (It's brought home with humor when a Syrian woman asks a dark-skinned man where he's from and he replies, "Queens.") Richard Jenkins' character acts out of perhaps a combination of liberal guilt, kindness, and boredom. His life isn't going particularly brightly and these "visitors" offer a change in his lifestyle. The film is political in the sense that it concerns itself with immigration, but it's more about basic human principles than political ones. Jenkins doesn't want his new roommate to get deported, not exactly out of a political affiliation or opinion on immigration, but because he wants to keep his friend around and see him and his girlfriend happy. (There's an interesting strain throughout the film about the girlfriend feeling beholden and maybe a little ashamed of having to rely on Jenkins' kindness.) The cast is uniformly quite fine, and I couldn't help but feel that McCarthy's casting choices were almost like Jim Jarmusch's or Claire Denis', in the way he brings together smaller character actors of diverse cultural backgrounds. (Hiam Abbass, who plays the Syrian mother, is in the next Jarmusch film, "The Limits of Control.") In the closing image I was reminded of Denis' "Beau travail," in which a ravaged-faced man expresses himself through music and movement, trying to keep a memory alive.

Bugcrush (2006, Carter Smith)
I didn't feel that the horror film "The Ruins" lived up to the intense praise that the book by Scott Smith generated (such as Stephen King proclaiming it as "the best horror novel of the new century"). But Carter Smith's earlier short film, "Bugcrush," available in the "Boys Life 6" collection, has a rewardingly chilly, antiseptic quality that serves as a nice escape from the hopelessly cheery gay romantic comedies we're used to -- even if I found its ending almost oppressively disturbing. Smith is a rarity in the film world: an openly gay horror director whose films aren't campy. (The same can't be said for "Chucky" creator Don Mancini.) His dark, creepy visuals and sense of unease have similarities to a serious-as-cancer director like David Fincher. The short film was based on a story by Canadian artist Scott Treleaven, and before making films Smith learned his visual style by working as a fashion photographer.

What begins as a familiar horror and even gay film cliché -- a group of teenagers wondering about a strange new kid -- becomes a much darker, elliptical, and increasingly horrific story. The claustrophobic style and metaphoric subject matter invite comparisons to Kafka and David Cronenberg, while the grisly seediness of it brings to mind Dennis Cooper. We identify with the shy, pretty Ben as he gets invited into the mysterious private life of Grant, a brooding and not-particularly-gay-seeming boy from school. There's tactile, uncomfortable sexual tension in their initial exchanges. ("It's not like we hang out or anything," says Ben, inviting Grant to respond with, "Yeah, well…we should sometime.") When the two spend a night together after school there's a sense of seduction with the underlying threat of violence, and what results is the frightening glimpse of a naïve boy into a strange world of boys, bugs, and getting high.

For the Bible Tells Me So (2007, Daniel G. Karslake)
A film that operates to both show us the hypocrisy of biblical references being used by literalists as anti-gay propaganda and to reveal the true meaning of the passages by putting them into historical context. The film is also a personal history of the various religious families depicted who have been affected by homosexuality, namely in their children, and how they've come to accept them, not accept them, or, in the most tragic case, learn to accept them only after losing them. I'm thankful for my upbringing -- as a gay person who was raised in an environment free from religious doctrine and yet with a strong sense of right and wrong. Being raised in an environment free of religion means that some of the religious discussions proved educational for me -- how it was an "abomination" when Onan ejaculated outside of his partner's vagina, spilling his "seed" without the potential for procreation. ("Onan" as in "onanism" -- ie: masturbation.)

Married Life (2007, Ira Sachs)
Drawing heavily on the morals and pleasure of Hitchcock and the melodrama of Sirk, Ira Sachs seems equally indebted to Todd Haynes, most obviously in "Far From Heaven" (co-starring Patricia Clarkson), but there's also a scene where Clarkson gasps for air that brings the parking garage scene from "Safe" to mind. The complex interweaving of characters' relationships to one another, and the tragic inevitability inherent when they unexpectedly collide, reminded me of Jacques Rivette's great "Secret Defense." I think Sachs is a little more interested in being sophisticatedly pleasurable -- the opening title sequence, the Doris Day on the soundtrack -- and dealing in artifice; he's said so far in his career he's dealt mostly with deceit, and that seems true. He's got a taste for old-fashioned irony and plays around a little with post-modern techniques like point of view (we're told the story by Pierce Brosnan, a side character), but he does generate genuine suspense in some cinematic flashes like a scene where a bathtub overflows, or when a compound of deceit goes so far that it threatens to take everything away. Sachs may not be dealing with complex emotions, but he is peeling back relationships and showing the conning and self-interest they involve.

Ishtar, Wicker Man, Little Man Tate, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, Next, Speed, Bowfinger, Deconstructing Harry, Dolores Claiborne

2008-09-14T15:48:00.002-05:00

Ishtar
Its reputation as a bad movie is accurate, mostly because scenes in the desert with Isabelle Adjani shrouded in a scarf have an inherent silliness and her performance is anything but silly. But it's not just her fault: The premise of the movie, two songwriting friends who go to Ishtar and find themselves in some political hot potato, gets dumber and dumber as it goes along. What's mostly disheartening about the movie is that the first twenty minutes, of Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman bantering back and forth and singing out loud their ideas for songs, are funny in the same dumb-comedy way that's become extremely popular now. The montage scenes that Elaine May makes out of their ideas are often pretty funny, and had she just stuck to that the movie could have probably worked pretty well.

The Wicker Man
To make a movie with some kind of spooky, culty quality to it you may need the added benefit of making your movie in a low-budget way. What drains this remake of any scariness is that the plot and the way it's presented to us has been drained of anything remotely archaic, it's glossy and professional and not at all spooky. (Ellen Burstyn's face make-up is so perfectly applied that you admire its perfection rather than find it creepy or ominous.) It's also bereft of any kind of pleasure because Neil LaBute is so humorless in his approach; many scenes of Nicolas Cage crying out in anguish are effective only in how increasingly funny it becomes to see the seriousness of the movie lacquered on with the stupidity of the plot.

Little Man Tate
The benefit of having actors direct movies isn't that they've been around film sets and have a little on-the-job training, it's that most serious actors -- or actors who care about acting rather than being models -- bring a greater attention to human beings than a director would. The downside is that sometimes these actors are not very familiar with the film medium as an art, so while they may make more interesting and truthful choices regarding characterization and behavior, they can lack an overall sense of the film as an art itself; the film can be conventional while the acting is special.

Jodie Foster's film isn't necessarily a great drama, although it obviously has similarities to her own life. (Interestingly, she casts herself as a downtrodden mother with the prodigy child.) What it has going for it is that it has a great deal of empathy, especially for children (as well as their families). While she gives a certain degree of fairness to both the mother of this prodigy and the academic who sees potential in him, eventually she sides with the mother who lets him just be a kid, but who doesn't challenge him mentally. (The academic who challenges him does so with kindness, but also with an order based on book-reading rather than messy life experiences.)

What Foster lacks is a visual flair; she tries to liven things up with dream sequences and images of the way the boy sees the world mathematically, but her staging is overly obvious -- there are a great deal of wide, open shots to emphasize loneliness and a lack of closeness.

Win a Date with Tad Hamtilon!
It's not the type of movie that knocks it out of the park, but from moment to moment it's an affable affair, both due to the enormously appealing performers and the slightly farcical tone (although, save for Nathan Lane, the timing isn't sharp enough to have the quality of good farce). The movie ultimately adopts the outlook that life can be like a movie even though the "right" choice (picking your childhood love over a movie star) isn't very plausible. It might have been more believable for the girl to go off with the movie star first, be crushed when it doesn't work, and then return to her childhood love. But "love" as a notion of ending up with someone as a result of available options would be too depressing for teenage girls to think about, and this wants the optimism of movies with the "true love" message that makes girls feel happy about their boyfriends who've gone to see the movie with them.

Next
Although the ending essentially makes what excitement the movie has generated pointless it's a quickly-paced B movie. It's not ineptly made, just not very plausible. (For a guy who has a superpower with strict rules there seem to be a lot of exceptions.) There's a pleasantly ludicrous quality to Nicolas Cage as a hero, and he's never bothered me the way he bothers some other people. His hair is absurd and his expressions are too, but he's the definition of a stylish actor, and there's something fun about an actor made famous for his risky, offbeat choices becoming the headline star of Hollywood action movies. There's not much that's clever about the film -- the conceit of looking into the future is pretty hokey and never aptly explained (nor is the generic threat of terrorism, with old-fashioned Russian terrorists to keep from any unsettling qualities invoked from, you know, real-life terrorism). Julianne Moore doesn't have many notes to play, but she does the efficient, calculated professional type as well as you can. And the surprise of Peter Falk would make any movie more enjoyable.

Speed
The cool, icy opening credits made me take notice and think maybe "Speed" was as good as I remember it being when I saw it at eight years old. It turns out the director worked as a cinematographer for Paul Verhoeven, so he would have some experience in glossy thrills. The opening set piece in an elevator, with its echoes of "Silence of the Lambs," is terrifically sustained, and Dennis Hopper and Jeff Daniels fill the movie out nicely. While the idea for the speed-detonated bomb is often exciting, it loses that excitement the moment the bus jumps over that ramp (all the set-up shots make it look impossible). And when they repeat the entire movie as a subway chase for the last 15 minutes it degrades into outright silliness. But there are enough distractions along the way -- oh no, Hopper has an underground money tunnel! -- that make it entertaining, and ultimately it's Keanu Reeves' show. He was never more sleekly beautiful.

Bowfinger
Its good nature makes its shortcomings more acceptable (such as Eddie Murphy's second role as a movie star's geeky brother), and while generally you could say that it's a "satire" of the movie industry it's more specifically satirizing obsession with celebrity and actor pretentions. (There's an exchange of gold when Steve Martin tells Christine Baranski that their film is in a new style, "Cinema Nouveau," and she slowly replies "Ohhh" as if she understands.) Murphy's perfirmance as the movie star reminds you what makes him such a vital, exciting comedy presence (contrasted against Martin's braininess).

Deconstructing Harry
The most jarring thing about it is how full of foul language it is, and then how nonchalant it is about things like prostitution. But it's still as watchable as any Allen movie. The cast seems weirdly dated -- Billy Crystal, Demi Moore -- and Judy Davis' performance is so frenzied it barely resembles a human being.

Dolores Claiborne
I haven't read Stephen King's story, but the characters have been created with such richness that his depictions are sympathetic simply by virtue of his intense interest. The movie has been filmed like a stern melodrama from the '30s -- the stylized, accented performances easily bring to mind Katharine Hepburn (in particular the amazing Judy Parfitt). The cast is incredible, but it's not a stunt assembly; they fall perfectly in their roles. Kathy Bates and Parfitt have the fortune of being able to play two ages, and we can clearly, beautifully see how their relationship changes over time (and how Bates changes from polite and subservient to a hardened woman). The movie will have a sudden burst of violence, as when David Strathairn hits Bates, but more often the drama comes from emotional abuse, how Bates and Parfitt eventually bond over their mistreatment by men, or a bank scene in which Bates realizes her money is gone, or a distressing scene where Strathairn abuses his daughter and her face goes slack when she finally relents. The movie has many beautiful lines, the best being the doctrine that Parfitt passes down to Bates: "Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto." It's definitely a woman's movie, but not necessarily man-hating; even the reprehensible Strathairn character calls his wife the shortened "D," alternating between impotent frustration and wanting her approval. The bleak, rotten blue tones of the present against the warmer tones of the past give the movie a visual beauty.

Love Actually

2008-08-27T01:34:00.000-05:00

Love Actually (2003, Richard Curtis)
In what mostly amounts to a cinematic happy pill (a shot of simplistic optimism earned not through depth but from Hallmark schmaltz) the first movie from Richard Curtis gains a degree of levity from his propensity for light vulgarities -- porn stars finding love, a Prime Minister's aid who blurts out "fuck," etc. -- and a cast worthy of more than the gloppy simplicity of his lovey-dovey Christmas movie. (It may Curtis' idea of good writing to have Bill Nighy play an aging rock star who remakes the Troggs' "Love Is All Around" as a Christmas song and also use that song's theme to bookend the movie with images of loved ones reuniting in airports, but it's curious that he would so easily call the song shit -- and it is shit -- and not then be doubtful about the premise of his own movie.)

When it aims to be uplifting it's in a cutesy way that doesn't mean anything, as when a boy chases after a girl he's got a crush on and gets a kiss. That's fine on paper, but when you play it as some major set piece for a movie, and load it up with the pretension of saying that if the kid doesn't chase the girl now he'll regret it for the rest of his life, the movie becomes weirdly top-heavy. Curtis' movie may be thematically and emotionally lumpy, but he's got a keen eye for actors, and a number of them -- Nighy, Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, Laura Linney -- navigate his script without succumbing to sentimentality, and Thompson in particular injects the most shaded performance of the lot by giving her hurt wife role some weariness. Nighy is an absolute hoot, and Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Grant are both pleasurable in their moments on screen. And in their segments that are shamefully neglected at the ending wrap-up, Linney and Rodrigo Santoro (a beautiful and suggestive actor) manage to give a tragically unworkable tinge to their budding relationship of co-workers whose feelings for each other have been left untouched for years.

Brief Crossing

2008-08-25T03:57:00.002-05:00

Brief Crossing (2001, Catherine Breillat)
What is it about Catherine Breillat's films that are so beautiful? Aside from her reputation as a gory porn mistress, she is enormously tender (with the ability to make you feel like you're on the edge of a cliff emotionally and take everything away just as easily as she's given it to you). Her camera, documentary-like but often with poetic placement, observes minor, gentle inflections. She very strongly makes her characters exist in an environment -- here, a ship sailing. And even more strongly she can exploit a situation to great effect, such as one scene where the two newly acquainted lovers sit in a lounge, while the camera observes a magic show in the background with its cheesy mystery music scoring their drinking.

Breillat has a definite type -- dark, lean, nubile young men. But her female characters, demanding to be in the forefront with their frequent proclamations, are just as much of a type, intelligent and world-weary. In this, among the most affecting romance-while-traveling movies, she (Sarah Pratt) laments her age compared to his (Gilles Guillain) mere sixteen years. On their first meeting she seems mildly irritable, accepting his help (in the form of a cafeteria tray) only until she finds a better option elsewhere. As the two become more involved her insecurity around him reveals itself further, despite his gentle nature. With the ending you're unsure if this is a woman who breaks hearts along her way or if she ultimately views him as another in the line of brutes she generalizes men to be. This is a woman who isn't afraid to indulge in an affair, and she's not afraid to continue it -- but who selfishly, mechanically cuts herself off from feeling when it's necessary to do so. That's a lot for Breillat to put forth in the film's final scenes, but she does it, and it rests largely on the searching, wrenching face of Guillain, who frantically comes to the realization that, however cruelly, he's a little bit older now.

Welfare

2008-08-24T22:59:00.002-05:00

Welfare (1975, Frederick Wiseman)
The degree to which the film is rewarding is partly based on the inherent drama of people in dire circumstances. Some are irritable, some are manipulative, some are defeated, some are confused, some are driven insane, and some are simply content making conversation while waiting. (The "waiting" aspect is brought poetically to the fore when one subject invokes Godot.) And while Wiseman may not make clear points about his feelings, his subjects often do, as with one white client asking a black security guard why blacks, who account for ten percent of the population, are responsible for sixty-three percent of the crime. We see many immigrants and minorities in the welfare office -- but so too do we see a great number of black security officers. We see a lot of legislative rules that prevent people from getting money NOW, which could be cynically seen as an act to kill off the needy, or push them to the limit so as to get help elsewhere first.

In a world pre-computer, the office is filled with a lot of paper and slips and ultimately disorder, resulting in clients repeating their stories over again, and with increasing urgency they often have a hard time being clearly understood. The officers who work at the welfare office are snippy, evasive (mentioning things to get clients to focus attention elsewhere, like continually suggesting they "come back tomorrow"), some are concerned, and some are interested primarily in their position in the office hierarchy. You would hope that new computerized systems would increase efficiency, transparency, and bring different offices together without endless telephone calls and letter writing, but the human drama -- the way people behave and interact to get what they want -- remains stark, complex, and unobstructed.

Space Cowboys, Finding Graceland, A Night in Heaven, Swimming with Sharks, Son of Rambow

2008-08-24T06:05:00.004-05:00

Space Cowboys (2000, Clint Eastwood)
The limitations of Clint Eastwood's skill as a director -- his bluntness, for instance -- are overcome in "Space Cowboys" by the offhand fun in the exchanges between Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner. That fun never becomes slapstick, it retains some measure of weight -- it's the bullshitting of my father's generation, and the moments requiring a bit of gravity (the diagnosis of an illness, say) are done without sentimentality, but rather a restrained kind of acceptance. The last image in particular, a far-out scene that has the logic of magic realism (unlike the overall plot of the movie, which is mostly preposterous), is neither weighty nor frivolous; it's jazziness in space.

Finding Graceland (1998, David Winkler)
Although it occasionally veers into sentimentality, "Finding Graceland" has some charm to it, and it's a perfectly fine example of a road movie, albeit one tinged with tragedy. (The idea, someone who pretends to be someone else to escape from grief, is certainly good dramatic material. And the bookend structure of bringing closure to broken souls is somewhat touching.) Although Harvey Keitel has the flashier role, it's Johnathon Schaech who gives the movie some off-beat mileage. His angular, distinct beauty seems out of place in the South, and his hairdo sticks on his head like a wig, but he has the cornball innocence of the '50s and that seems right here. He's an enormously appealing actor, and I wish he had a more extensive resume. Keitel, on the other hand, is serviceable in his role, but his hamminess is sometimes grating, as with his overdone accent and his stereotyped squeal-cry of anguish. A performance scene of Elvis' most enjoyable song, "Suspicious Minds," is also undone by Keitel's singing which is most likely lip-synching.

A Night in Heaven (1983, John G. Avildsen)
A sturdy showcase for Christopher Atkins at his hard-bodied, all American boy peak, but the movie is a bit confused in what it's trying to say. When his teacher (Leslie Ann Warren) happens to be in the strip club where Atkins works he gives her an electrifying lap-dance. It might be something that sets the stage for an awakening in her home life, but the movie results in a messagey morality play something like "Eyes Wide Shut" but with a subplot about her husband's career that seems like another movie entirely. For some reason it's decided that Atkins' role must become a character demanding punishment. For what reason? Presumably because, despite the movie featuring a brave image of Atkins' penis during a sex scene, the movie was required to have a pro-marriage stance where no woman having an affair could ever think to leave her partner.

Swimming with Sharks (1994, George Huang)
Too dreary and one-note to be successful in what it tries to do (it comes across as a revenge movie aimed at cruel bosses), it lacks the fun of other boss-from-Hell movies like "The Devil Wears Prada." It attempts some kind of substance by sheepishly suggesting that even an awful boss has his reasons, and its dark and implausible ending suggests that the only way to be successful in Hollywood is to join the other assholes. Some people may find it brave that the movie shows a character who becomes what he loathes, but what little logical support there is for it is flimsy at best, and it comes across more like a movie trying to be truthful by simply being dark.

Son of Rambow (2007, Garth Jennings)
With a premise similar to that of "Be Kind Rewind," "Son of Rambow" has less going on as far as that film's statement on community, but it may be more simply entertaining. There's something pleasurable about watching the film's hero (Bill Milner), a self-styled son of Rambo involved in a do-it-yourself remake/sequel/pirate copy of "First Blood," find himself in situations that require his tiny little body to go flying through the air. It's a more simply heartwarming film than "Be Kind Rewind," something that imbues itself with sentiment so as to be emotionally satisfying to a large audience, but there's nothing that isn't genuine about the young performers in the movie. It's particularly on-target with a French foreign exchange student, styled in the latest New Wave trends, that the British schoolchildren fall in love with (and who is lightly satirized as a fair-weather friend seeking recognition).

Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock?

2008-08-22T23:13:00.002-05:00

Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock? (2006, Harry Moses)
A similar-styled expose of the art world as "My Kid Could Paint That," except flipped: where that film seemed to be about a fraud, this one seems to be about an authentic work. Teri Horton, the trucker who finds the discarded painting that looks like a Pollock, isn't dumb, but she's not an aesthete -- she's flabbergasted that people could be interested in Pollock's paintings. In many ways the film is drawing comparisons between Horton and Pollock. The art establishment -- by and large made up of businessmen -- doesn't much care for Horton and doesn't believe in her painting. The former director of the Met, Thomas Hoving (a man who contorts his body wildly when examining a painting for authenticity), claims she "knows nothing." The film portrays her as a hard drinking woman who's led an unconventional and sometimes tragic life, including the death of her daughter; it's easier to see similarities between her and Pollock than with Pollock and the Tiffany's heir and Princeton-educated Hoving.

Although the painting has no buyer history, striking scientific evidence seems to point in the direction of authenticity. A finger print on the back of the found painting matches a print on a paint can in Pollock's studio, as well as a Pollock painting in a gallery. A celebrated forger, whose fakes were sold by Christie's, says Pollock's painting method would be too much to think about and says he wouldn't be able to replicate them himself. Standing mostly on principle and turning down offers less than what she imagines the painting to be worth (in the millions), it's perhaps ironic that the painting Horton views as ugly is the same thing that's inspired her for a decade.

Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema

2008-08-22T18:58:00.002-05:00

Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006, Lisa Ades, Lesli Klainberg)
Mostly affirms what we already know, but there are a handful of titles discussed that I was personally in the dark about, mainly lesbian ("Desert Hearts," "Go Fish," "All Over Me," "Watermelon Woman") or black titles ("Punks"). B. Ruby Rich makes the apt observation of how earlier in gay cinema men looked to beefcake physique films, and another commentator rightly laments the loss of the communal theater experience in favor of the DVD market, where going to the theater could sometimes be a gay bar for people who don't go to gay bars.

In the movie's chronological approach it feels as if the major gay films of the '60s and '70s (Warhol, Anger, Fassbinder, Visconti, Jarman, Pasolini, Akerman) are more substantial than what followed, at least until the New Queer Cinema of the likes of Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant, et al. But John Waters makes the point of being interested in films that are more than just gay, as with his satirical idea about a mother who forces her straight son to be gay when he's not. The aims of gay films in the '90s may be to infiltrate the Hollywood mode and provide greater representation in mainstream media. But I don't feel that that has necessarily resulted in good films, and embracing the values of bland Hollywood formulas, even with those political aims, seems to me more like back-peddling from the already astonishing achievements in do-it-yourself, individual filmmaking that resulted from marginalized people creating their own modes of expression.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2008-08-22T02:54:00.002-05:00

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, Woody Allen)
To the girls vacationing in Spain (the engaged Rebecca Hall and the single Scarlett Johansson), Javier Bardem offers a romantic getaway, including sex -- but it's not a sordid sexual rendezvous so much as a chunk of time spent between adults. Bardem has a bluntness and sexual appetite, but also a courteousness, as in how he insists his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) speaks English in front of Johansson. It may be a comically exaggerated version of a Latin lover (and in some respects, Bardem, an invisible actor, is a great actor in the mold of Mastroianni), but it doesn't play strictly as a comedy, and offers real freedom from the stasis of conventional romances (through non-monogamy and a threesome relationship). The acting is mostly free from the actor quirks we expect from actors in Woody Allen movies -- Bardem and Cruz in particular have an amazing chemistry. And it's a hopelessly romantic premise, based not just on the exotic locale but the world of lovers, painters, and artists, and Bardem in particular decked out in wonderful linens. (Perhaps simply, the American males are khaki and Lacoste-wearing businessmen.)

I have no idea how personal this is to Allen's own views of romance (it would be easy to draw comparisons between the non-conventional here and the highly-criticized aspects of Allen's private life) and I don't necessarily think it's valuable to judge a movie that way. And I may find it intellectually interesting that this movie, essentially a series of examples against traditional one-man one-woman monogamy and depictions of its loneliness and repression, shows negatively the kinds of things that, as a gay man, I consider Holy Grail (long-term monogamy). I don't think those readings illuminate the movie, but it's interesting how the freedom the film offers, which is readily available in the gay community, is ultimately as lonely and repressive as the depiction of marriage. That said, the kind of adult affair that Allen shows -- prior to the crazed Penelope Cruz -- can be the kind of awakening that livens people up and can refresh their lives, and in that respect (unconventional romances or affairs that aren't just sexual) it shows opportunities for happiness.

Ed Gonzalez, an interesting writer, finds fault with the movie's depiction of fleeting bisexuality (which he strangely calls lesbianism). But the scene is remarkably chaste and could hardly be viewed as Allen fantasizing. And the moment is hardly "lesbianism" but rather an introduction of a new kind of sexual expression for a character who's lived heterosexually. (I don't think that's insulting to gay people -- it's open-minded and free from black/white straight/gay politics.)

Allen's film doesn't ultimately come down in favor of long-term monogamy or the unconventional romances. Like Bardem's poet father, Allen, in a more misanthropic way, may be suggesting that the world simply hasn't learned how to love.

Lucky You

2008-08-11T00:26:00.000-05:00

Lucky You (2007, Curtis Hanson)
A supremely satisfying movie that I'd hesitate to call a genre picture because Curtis Hanson isn't so much a genre director as he is an old-style studio director moving from subject to subject. His style is spectacularly unshowy so you couldn't say he's trying to "leave his mark" on the genre, but rather respectfully add to it. (Although with the bad response this movie received, it's clear that the patience Hanson has in storytelling is not reflected with modern sensibilities.) He is enormously attentive to his actors: All of the performances have a light yet lived-in quality. Drew Barrymore is luminescent, her singing soft and lovely. Eric Bana's is a restrained, thoughtful performance (so too is Robert Downey, Jr.'s brief cameo). And Robert Duvall embodies his character without seemingly doing anything, and yet his subtle one-upmanship is deeply felt. Hanson is focused on the behavior of these characters and invariably when we feel tension (even from the sunglass-wearing oddball player) it's based on how the characters are interacting with each other from across the table rather than who's about to win the pot. And the score, made up of slide guitars and light piano and peppered with George Jones songs, adds a pleasantly amiable quality to the movie.

Wolf, The Hills Have Eyes, Harper

2008-08-10T04:25:00.001-05:00

Wolf (1994, Mike Nichols)
Perhaps the most plainly enjoyable Mike Nichols movie that I've seen. With its zooms it seems heavily influenced by Kubrick's "The Shining," although Jack Nicholson's performance here is much more restrained, despite scenes requiring him to leap out of view and transform into a wolf. Nichols cleverly and rightly treats the wolf man aspect of the film as an everyday phenomenon, like a kind of sickness; there is little feeling of the supernatural. And Nichols just as rightly gives a great deal of focus to the simplicities of the characters' daily lives -- the movie works just as well as a story of corporate mergers and wheeling-and-dealing. James Spader brilliantly plays the conniving and sniveling foil to Nicholson's editor-in-chief role.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977, Wes Craven)
Some people may prefer the crazy-hick insanity of this film to Wes Craven's more glossy, commercial (and enjoyable) work, but I found it to be a second-rate impression of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the kind of morally bankrupt freak-fest that shouldn't be idolized anyway.

Harper (1966, Jack Smight)
A movie that has signs of the cool factor of the '60s -- and even overripe spoofing of it, as with the dancing pool girl -- and yet the overly-convoluted plot goes on far too long and the script by William Goldman, a writer famous for the fraudulent, chintzy cleverness and sentimentality of scripts like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Princess Bride," regards itself too highly to even make for a throwaway charmer vehicle for Paul Newman.

Xanadu, Blow Out, Breathless, Rec, Roller Boogie

2008-08-08T14:50:00.005-05:00

Xanadu (1980, Robert Greenwald)
More simply odd than a disastrous spectacle, it comes across as something that Gene Kelly would agree to do because he saw "Grease" and imagined it would revitalize screen dancing and wanted to be a part of whatever Olivia Newton-John did next. Kelly doesn't embarrass himself, but his dancing isn't inspired, either. Oddly, Newton-John fares fairly well -- the movie isn't any good, but her ethereal beauty remains unscathed. And Michael Beck is appealing thanks in large part to his hair. The movie isn't crazy enough to be exciting -- most of the time I wasn't sure if the characters were ghosts or dreaming -- but the ending has at least a little sparkle. More ELO would have made it much more enjoyable.

Blow Out (1981, Brian De Palma)
Perhaps too much of a rip-off movie to be entirely pleasing (I prefer De Palma when he rips off himself, as with "The Fury"), but as a pulpy thriller it's pretty successful. And while the train station ending doesn't equal the grandeur of "Carlito's Way," it nonetheless possesses an admirable degree of tragedy.

Breathless (1983, Jim McBride)
I find it odd that someone who found a degree of "experimental" credibility would remake someone else's masterpiece, and while the general consensus is that "Breathless" as a remake is sacrilege, McBride has his own weird style, more rockabilly than cool (because there are limits to Richard Gere as an icon of cool). And yet I would find it much more respectable to just make your own movie.

Rec (2007, Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza)
In the series of pointless, boring horror movies made to seem novel by approximating documentary techniques this one only stands out because it occasionally has children zombies, but there's nothing about it that will make you think for a second. George Romero's "Diary of the Dead" at least had some coy intelligence and I found it a more tolerable comment on everything-is-recorded modern society than the deadening "Cloverfield." But zombie movies have become so stale that the only way to make them interesting now may be to have an all-child zombie movie. Maybe in musical form.

Roller Boogie (1979, Mark L. Lester)
Pleasantly throwaway, it's an ideal movie to make about a fad. It may not be a definitive statement on roller skate parties of the late '70s, but its ephemeral quality goes in hand with the briefness of the subculture. What makes it particularly successful as a time piece are the amazing fashions: Short shorts, gold lamé, and tight-fitting everything in general.

88 Minutes, The Dark Knight, My Kid Could Paint That, Stop-Loss, Walk Hard, Bill, Lions for Lambs, Savage Grace, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jumper

2008-07-31T02:21:00.004-05:00

88 Minutes (2007, Jon Avnet)
"88 Minutes" is completely implausible, but it's the epitome of a star vehicle, the kind of thing that only gets made because Al Pacino agrees to do it. And he's still a good enough actor -- despite all the criticisms leveled against him that he's been doing the same thing for years -- that his line-readings are never boring. It's genuinely entertaining for the first while, and pretty funny in the way that Pacino approaches his character as a guy caught in a big mess. It's not an overly violent movie and it mostly focuses on Pacino, so if the plot is ridiculous, so what? I laughed out loud frequently and I had a pretty good time.

The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
The plot is often preposterous -- Ledger's Joker continually and accurately assumes what seemingly everyone in Gotham will do next, and plans accordingly so they fall into his traps; even his mistakes are considered. The movie is filled with multitudes of "ingenious" sequences, such as the Joker implanting a bomb inside a living person, and they're the kinds of things that you can find thrilling once, but they serve no real purpose other than to astound the audience. Scenes are introduced and then tossed away -- we see the Scarecrow at the beginning of the film, never to be seen again. The Joker manages to break into Bruce Wayne's penthouse (referred to as the safest place in Gotham), and when Batman jumps out of the window to save someone the scene ends; but what happens to the Joker and his henchman who are still inside the penthouse? Scenes like that are just ignored. (Other scenes make no logical sense at all, like when passengers on a ship targeted to explode vote -- by putting their votes on paper and into a hat -- about whether to detonate a bomb on another boat to save their own lives.) The relative implausibility of Batman's gadgets -- he pretty much maps the entire city with sonar (and Morgan Freeman can find one person out of thirty million) -- could be forgivable, because the gadgets are part of the Batman myth. But they have none of the fun of the ones in the James Bond movies. Many of the performances are good, in particular Gary Oldman and Heath Ledger, who has a truly amazing scene where he's dressed in a female nurse's outfit. But Christian Bale's Batman is pretty much just a gruff-sounding voice. Nolan's directing seems highly influenced by Michael Mann's epic "Heat" -- note the opening bank robbery sequence. But he has none of the sleek, icy efficiency of Mann's film. (Although Nolan's film is the kind of thing that babbles about "chaos" in a city that looks like New York, to make it seem up on world issues.) Nolan's Batman isn't an epic so much as it's a movie loaded to the brim.

My Kid Could Paint That (2007, Amir Bar-Lev)
The idea that a kid could paint abstract art throws a wrench in the movement in general. If all you believe in is the end result, and if those results are the same whether authored by a kid or an educated, trained adult, then the kid truly is just as good an artist. If you believe in narratives in art, then the backgrounds of artists -- whether it's their private lives or their images (the way you "imagine" the method of painting in a Pollack painting) -- then the end results aren't all there is. If Marla's parents painted her paintings for her, then the greater question of the value of authorship comes into play -- that people are purchasing hype. The Marla brand may sell because Marla is such a young artist; however, the stand-in in art has existed at least since Warhol, Warhol himself saying that many of his works were actually developed by other people, his "name" serving simply as a generic brand -- an artistic act in and of itself. The Marla case may not be that sophisticated. Towards the end, the movie brings up a genuine sense of unease, because the mother seems honest and the father less so. (It's possible that the mother is unaware even if the father really is painting the paintings, since the two work opposing shifts.) The father is implicated, awkwardly trying to cover up why his daughter asks him for help on camera, or scrambling to expound on the brilliance of one painting that was via film proven to be painted by Marla (a painting that a gallery viewer thinks looks nothing like the other Marlas). As far as the mystery about who paints the Marlas, consider the way that the walls in the Olmstead's house are painted and compare them to Marla's paintings. Then consider the titles of her paintings ("Ode to Pollock"). The movie works on both the level of mystery and abstract art expose, and both are good.

Stop-Loss (2008, Kimberly Peirce)
It has a good heart -- its sympathies are with soldiers, and even though a character says "Fuck the President," it's not particularly political in the right-left sense. As a movie about former soldiers it's a fine enough statement; none of them are heroicized for easy sympathy (they're not Tom Hanks). But it may be too close to the Iraq war to make an overall coherent narrative. And while the movie is dedicated to real human beings, to make a war movie while the war is still going on and give it a feeling of immediacy it may need the added outrage of agitprop.

Walk Hard (2007, Jake Kasdan)
While I think it's written with a bit of mean-spirited mockery -- is it really that funny to send-up "Walk the Line," a movie about a real person who really did witness his own brother's gruesome death? -- it's also an antiquated comedy and that's kind of interesting. (With references to Elvis, Johnny Cash, and The Incredible Hulk TV show, this is a movie aimed not at teenagers but at audiences in their 50s.) What's good about it is that it's not quite as forced as other recent comedies (and there's a genuinely hilarious moment when John C. Reilly and Kristen Wiig compare their dreams; he, to be a musician; she, to live in a house made of candy). What's lousy about it is that it's a one-joke comedy. But John C. Reilly has such a truly lovely voice that at least it serves as an example of why he should be cast in a musical that doesn't think life is one big joke.

Bill (2007, Bernie Goldmann, Melisa Wallack)
Perhaps a hard sell because it's not really a comedy and it's not really an "indie" movie; it's one of those movies about a guy going through an identity crisis, and in this case happens to concern itself mostly with a budding friendship between Aaron Eckhart and the teenage Logan Lerman. Although it treads similar ground, it doesn't have the pretensions of "American Beauty."

Lions for Lambs (2007, Robert Redford)
Although it may not be a great movie, Robert Redford -- never someone I've cared about particularly -- has a genuine interest in story, even though his film is unconventional for a Hollywood drama in the sense that it's essentially a triad of debates. That in itself is enough to make it interesting, and Redford is intelligent and caring enough to make the debates worth listening to. In a general sense they deal with the apathy of Americans about this war, which has taken longer than World War 2. But what makes it particularly successful is that it's a movie where no one knows exactly what to think, but still care and look for answers regardless.

Savage Grace (2007, Tom Kalin)
A movie that combines elegant finery and decadent melodrama, it gives Julianne Moore, the fiercest American actress, her long-overdue "Mommie Dearest" role. The movie isn't a bungled art movie like that one -- it's craziness is intended -- but it's a Freudian statement if ever there was one. What could be titled "The Creation of a Homosexual," Moore's character doesn't view homosexuality as an aberration, she associates it with Proust. And even though some people may take the movie as associating homosexuality and insanity, I think it's closer to the idea of homosexuality as an evolutionary form -- Boulez, fashion, and sexual hedonism. (Moore's son, at about 12, invites another boy over while his parents are away. And the clothes in the movie -- Moore's blotchy blood-red dress; her son's lined sweater and above-the-knee shorts -- are enough to maintain interest.) The movie is marvelously cast, not just Moore, but the impeccable Stephen Dillane, the otherworldly Eddie Redmayne, and I was delighted to see Barney Clark, the wonderful child actor from Roman Polanski's equally wonderful "Oliver Twist."

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller)
Although filmmakers should be allowed to stretch and we as audiences shouldn't relegate them to churning out the same movie year after year, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is not only overlong (a trait in the Apatow tradition) but an uneasy mix of relationship drama and comedy. (It's also neither written nor directed by Apatow himself.) You can admire how the makers want a comedy that focuses on the human element and one that isn't afraid to spend some time doing it, but the laughs are few and far between, and the insights are few. Russell Brand and Mila Kunis are relaxed, open performers, but the movie seems adrift, and the only truly inspired moments -- aside from Brand's performance -- come from irrelevant scenes of Billy Baldwin as the star of a "CSI"-type drama who specializes in gruesomely awful one-liners.

Jumper (2008, Doug Liman)
Skillfully directed by Doug Liman, "Jumper" could have been a perfectly entertaining adventure comedy, but instead we're given a movie where specially gifted young men (they teleport, essentially like Nightcrawler in the X-Men movies) are hunted by a vigilante who doesn't think they should have that power, so large chunks of the movie are about them evading their captors. The opening, where a boy first discovers his power, could have set the stage for a pleasant children's adventure, but the boy gets older, and when he gets older he becomes much duller, in the form of Hayden Christenson. Luckily we have Jamie Bell, in a supernatural Angry Young Man role, to liven things up. I think Liman's directing has some fun to it, but the script is a let-down.

Mixed Blood

2008-07-23T04:20:00.000-05:00

Mixed Blood (1985, Paul Morrissey)
There are so many conflicting tones in the work of Paul Morrissey that it can seem hard to reconcile them. There is little difference in the gentleness here -- the ending image of the sad-eyed stud -- and in "Flesh." There is a relaxing optimism, heightened by the use of ethnic music (Morrissey equates rock and roll with drug suggestion), and yet the subject matter concerns a mother hen and her group of underage drug dealers, convinced that their way of life is acceptable because there are "no laws to stop us." Morrissey's film is thoroughly absurd, an anti-drug satire, and yet it is not an un-serious film. When the kids sell drugs on a street corner like a lemonade stand it's like a metaphor for the brazenness of drugs in the society. He presents a kind of hopeless comedy where kids, among them the impossibly beautiful Rodney Harvey, "go drink beer, break someone's teeth, and go party." And a party? "Drink more beer, break someone's head, and go home." One character describes their life as "so fucking boring you could puke and die."

Morrissey provides a vision of a community of drug users wallowing in squalidness, complete with the dealers who provide it. And yet the conservatism of his morality as it pertains to drugs goes against his liberal inclusiveness and comedic, non-dogmatic, gentle, and religion-free films. (His films may be religion-free because they present his view of life in the absence of religion and other forms of social order.) Even in a squalid den of drug dealers, murder, and addiction there are core elements of assumed families.

His formal qualities are largely influenced by his open-if-still-stylized approach. In his unobstructed visuals -- neither light nor dark, with a tendency towards rot -- and the exaggerated differentness of his characters he recalls Mike Leigh. His films are so intently focused on personality that they defy traditional ideas of acting. His performers don't act, they exist. The stagy fight scenes aren't realistic so much as they are gruesome punch lines. What may be perceived as bad acting is the lack of actual "acting" -- it's Bressonian but with an overripe satirical bluntness. When characters here say "nigger," it doesn't have the usual power-dominating force the word carries in most movies, it's simply blunt casualness.

WALL-E, Criminal Justice, Seed of Chucky, The Savages

2008-07-21T20:31:00.003-05:00

WALL-E (2008, Andrew Stanton)
It's as visually impressive as I was lead to believe, but I think the comparisons to "2001" are based mostly on the intended references rather than similarity in achievement: a lonely bot in space, a villainous robot that looks like HAL, classical music pieces borrowed from the same Kubrick movie; "Hello, Dolly!" in space instead of "Daisy Bell" sung by HAL in "2001." It's easy to generate an audience's feelings for robots when you give the robots human features -- eyes, fingers -- so I don't think that's much to write home about. I had heard conservatives disliking the movie for its environmental aspect -- how Earth is abandoned when no more plants can grow -- but what I found more suspect was the insinuation that robots are lovable but people are all fat idiots. I'm not offended by the environmental doom, but rather the lazy cynicism. The movie ends with chasing and robots fighting each other, and that doesn't live up to the lonely opening. There's a lot about the movie to admire, but the hype overtakes the actual achievement.

Criminal Justice (2008, Otto Bathurst, Luke Watson)
Although the miniseries starts off as murder investigation and trial, eventually, though the nature of its length, it manages to make broader points about the court and justice system, albeit never straying from its sole case of a wrongfully convicted murderer. We're mostly sure that he's innocent from the start, even though the incident isn't quite clear and the evidence points towards him (a splendid Ben Whishaw). A large part of the emotional content is from the verbal abuse the suspect is dealt in court from the people who believe he did it. The series doesn't take any cheap shots, and while I wish that when the new evidence comes into play for an appeal that the filmmakers would have reentered the court, it's understandable why they didn't want to repeat themselves. In prison, as the suspect waits for his trial to finish, the series mostly manages to successfully portray the solitude and danger of prisons without resorting to pop psychology. (These sequences involve Pete Postlethwaite, which may remind viewers of "In the Name of the Father.") The ties between the prisoners and the police that are discovered near the end of the series make the scope of the series larger, but for the most part it focuses plainly on the tragedy of how institutional justice reduces people into things, even while admitting that it's the best system there is.

Seed of Chucky (2004, Don Mancini)
I can't imagine the reactions of audiences who went to see this as a horror movie; its main concerns are a family breakdown between Chucky, his wife, and their gender-confused puppet-child. You can't really call it a satire, but it's certainly a comedy long before it's a horror movie. The comically exaggerated deaths come in completely irrelevantly to the plot, which is mostly jokes about Jennifer Tilly's B-movie career, John Waters hassling her as a paparazzo, and movie references to "The Shining," "Chinatown," and "Rebel Without a Cause." It's not a badly made movie, but it's the kind of movie you'll only enjoy if you think a puppet that looks like David Bowie dressed in drag is funny.

The Savages (2007, Tamara Jenkins)
Both Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are extraordinary actors, so it's their level of artistry that helps them escape from the general tone of charming contempt that this film exudes. Linney's character in particular is slathered on thick: not only does she have an affair with a married man, but she pops pills and steals stationary from work. That married man is played by Peter Friedman, which audiences may remember as the director of the retreat in "Safe." That may seem insignificant until you notice a few scenes that directly ape those of "Safe" -- Laura Linney doing aerobics badly in her hotel room (this mirrors a similar scene in "Safe") and a sex scene between the two shot from above, with the receiving partner looking incredibly disinterested, which is a famous scene from "Safe." The slight tone of mockery of nursing homes and their fraudulence -- preying on the guilt of families -- is not unlike "Safe"'s examination of New Age healing, although with much less austerity and, well, horror. At its best "The Savages" shows the indignity of old age, but it's a distanced movie, and it doesn't bother to fill that distance with anything that will make you think.

Paranoid Park, To Die For, Broadcast News

2008-07-08T09:32:00.002-05:00

Paranoid Park (2007, Gus Van Sant)
Like Van Sant's three other most recent films in the same style, nothing much happens in "Paranoid Park" but it's his sweetest film since "Mala Noche." Although a murder investigation drifts into the film, and in casual chopped-up memories the night in question is shown to us (including an alarmingly gory and thankfully brief image of a dying man), it's much more about Van Sant dropping in on this skateboarding subculture of slim, laid-back teens and their relaxed lives, while making room for observations about their insecurity, fear of commitment, and possible sexual confusion. Van Sant is a director who has openly and, at his best, honestly concerned himself with fashioning poetic odes to young, beautiful boys who he clearly loves, and this is his latest exercise in gentle adoration. His boy of choice this time around, Gabe Nevins, is a doe-eyed, open-faced naif, and he's attractive and pleasant enough to draw our attention. His narration at first sounds like a boy reading out loud but fits when you realize it goes hand in hand with his journal writing.

To Die For (1995, Gus Van Sant)
Although somewhat juvenile in its contempt for its main character (we're meant to laugh at what a ladder-climbing fraud she is, not least of all when she plays "All By Myself" by Eric Carmen at her husband's funeral) and all-too-fashionably critical of the media, it nevertheless serves as a solid example of Van Sant's power as a straightforward storyteller -- and with enough idiosyncrasies to keep from being boring (in particular a ghoulish ending featuring David Cronenberg). Nicole Kidman gives one of those campy performances of buffoonery, the kind of thing that makes audiences love Norma Desmond and Mommie Dearest, but it's Joaquin Phoenix who shows the most emotional range and sensitivity.

Broadcast News (1987, James L. Brooks)
Mostly bland and mediocre, I would be hard-pressed to describe what style of film James L. Brooks makes. Albert Brooks is barely funny and William Hurt is almost likable. It effectively shows the chaos of a newsroom in two scenes (Holly Hunter talking into Hurt's ear piece; Brooks sweating profusely) but aside from that the only memorable scene in this two hours plus movie is of an underused Joan Cusack who jumps over a baby to deliver a tape before airing.

Perfume

2008-07-08T05:57:00.004-05:00

Perfume (2006, Tom Tykwer)
Tom Tykwer definitely has a sense for audio and for visuals. At the opening of his film, he intersperses snippets of dead fish being slopped on the street, villagers vomiting, and pigs being gutted. At first I figured he was interested primarily in putting forth disgust to the audience, as if that was something desirable. And then there's a scene where an orphan baby is almost killed by older children, who smother the baby with a straw pillow before getting caught. The disgust I felt in these scenes almost made me quit watching. But while I resent that way of generating effect, it does allow Tykwer to set up his world: a rotting, ugly Europe and a child no one cares about. For a movie about a perfumer, and a boy who obsesses over it as if it's the only thing that makes life worth living, Tykwer makes a solid point.

Not only does Tykwer sustain interest in his storytelling for two-and-a-half hours, but he does so at times with a talent for sweeping awe, successfully passing on the feeling of experiencing a new sense, and the desire to make beautiful things.

As far as serial killer movies go, Tykwer's film is not "Seven" or "The Silence of the Lambs." We're not reacting to the gory genius of a Lecter character nor to the police thrills of Fincher's investigations. "Perfume" is about a character who is without; his killings are a twofold tragedy: he must kill to feel alive, to "preserve" love via the only thing he feels gives his life meaning, his extraordinary sense of smell. (And even though I don't think "Perfume" aims to be "realistic" about serial killing, I imagine most serial killers would sympathize with the "need" to kill.)

Like a less precious Peter Greenaway, Tykwer's film is closer to a sensual tragedy than a thriller. It may also be the ultimate depiction of fetishism, seeing people not as people but as a series of parts and sensations. Tykwer does bring home the horror of killing -- particularly in one exchange between Grenouille (an amazing, mostly worldless Ben Whishaw) and his most sought-after prize -- but through poetics (a soprano on the soundtrack, a flash of searing light) rather than grungy awfulness. His glorious, surreal ending is a sequence about bringing ecstasy to a terrified, filthy world, and it's the kind of balls-out filmmaking we're used to expecting only from the European art masters from decades ago.

Angels in America

2008-07-08T02:59:00.002-05:00

Angels in America (2003, Mike Nichols)
"Angels in America" isn't an empty pleasure -- it's a thematic wonder and, thanks in part to Thomas Newman's score, an often rousing film. It's by its nature political, and I don't just mean left and right American politics -- although there's certainly a lot of dialogue spilled on that -- but rather the debating nature of argument. Tony Kushner said the following about the relation of scriptwriting, novels, and playwriting: "Screenwriting is primarily a narrative art -- and I don't think that's true of playwriting, which is dialogic and dialectic, and is fundamentally always more about an argument than it is about narrative progression."

That pretty clearly explains Kushner's interest in "the argument," how his plays are like long, drawn-out essays. He clearly intends that, and I think it's his mistaken view of art in general. He's so wrapped up in the differences of mediums that he fails to realize that all great artists are interchangeable. Of course the mediums of Edward Hopper, Miles Davis, and John Cheever are different. But the effects they have on a human soul are very much the same.

There is a great deal to admire about Nichols' version of Kushner's play, not least of all in how he refuses to play it safe. He routinely lays it on the line with big statements: living statues, hospital rooms cracking open for angels. And his approach isn't humorless. Meryl Streep in particular has a couple of zingers. But it's not enough to make me view the film as anything other than a folly, despite my increasing eagerness during the first few episodes.

You can't necessarily blame Nichols for the novelty of actors playing so many roles -- it was that way on the stage -- but the result is the astonishment we're meant to feel at how they adopt so many visual and vocal disguises. Emma Thompson as a psychotic homeless person! Meryl Streep as a man! Nichols allows his actors to embarrassingly chew the scenery, and ironically it's the three most revered actors that do the worst of it: Streep, Thompson, and Al Pacino. Thompson's and Streep's performances are overly fussy and yet shamelessly broad. Thompson in particular doesn't play people at all, but rather constructs for the play. Al Pacino has a lot of energy, but thinks the best way to play a horrible disease is to start jerking his body around at various moments. Jeffrey Wright and Justin Kirk give the best performances in the film, Wright's nurse loaded with attitude and style complimenting Kirk's gentle, funny performance as an AIDS victim.

The content of the play, and of the film, is a lot of stereotyped situations and finger-pointing. By the end of it we don't really know a great deal about any of the characters except their surfaces. We don't understand AIDS any better, except that there's some political obfuscation involved and that AZT medication was hard to come by 20 years ago. But we don't have any kind of a profound experience, we don't really "experience" at all. The Pet Shop Boys' "Dreaming of the Queen" does what Kushner's play does and more, with much more subtlety, finesse, formal elegance, and compassion, and in five minutes as opposed to six hours.

Cocteau's theatricality must have influenced Nichols, and there's a scene where Kirk's character is reading a Cocteau book just in case he doesn't think we'll catch the allusion by ourselves. But Nichols rarely achieves any kind of poetry, even with his go-for-broke brazenness. It's an issue movie writ large, political time-stamping. The play itself may be a genuine artistic statement, and I can't imagine the topical impact it must have had on the gay community and the world in the '90s. The idea of the play and its size -- a big red flag demanding not to be ignored -- may be its great contribution. But a great work of art it is not.

Beautiful boys

2008-07-07T09:41:00.005-05:00

Beautiful actors have been a reason we've gone to movies since they began. And there's a reason why, when thinking of stars from the silents, the kind of people that spring to mind are Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, and Valentino, partly because we like beautiful things and partly because in a medium of images theirs are faces that stick in the brain. (Groucho's is a face that sticks in the brain, too, but I'm mostly interested in erotics.) But since movies as an artform today rarely achieve the heights of the great silents more and more I find myself seeking out the beautiful actors in smaller films and in television.

It's occasionally the case that beautiful movie stars happen across a major director or an interesting film, but by and large they're stuck in mediocre entertainments. Johnny Depp has had some surprising successes with serious directors, and my admiration for a number of Tim Burton's films notwithstanding, even he has been limited to only a handful of truly marginal filmmakers: Jim Jarmusch, Emir Kusturica, John Waters. (Anyone who knows me knows that "marginalized" directors, for me, hold much greater interest than the prestigious-indie ones such as Wes Anderson.)

Most movie stars in general have a hard enough time attracting the attention of serious auteurs, so it may seem asking a lot for someone to be beautiful, talented, and manage to find themselves in the presence of greatness. Off the top of my head Juliette Binoche seems like the most successful in this regard, having worked with the likes of Louis Malle, Leos Carax, Michael Haneke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Oliver Assayas, Chantal Akerman, Andre Techine, and Krzysztof Kieslowski. It may be easier for foreign actors to garner the attention of this calibre of directors, I'm not sure. (Catherine Deneuve would be another with an equally impressive roster: Techine, Francois Ozon, Luis Bunuel, Jacques Demy, and Lars von Trier to name a handful.)

While I may find myself entranced by the charm, sophistication, and grace of someone like Cary Grant, I may also find myself desiring to look at the lesser-appreciated stars of the time for their films, whether it's Tab Hunter or Dean Stockwell. While some of these types of stars may not possess the same acting chops or obvious signs of quality of a Cary Grant or a Brando, the nature of their marginalization may allow them to speak more truthfully (or simply more interestingly) about life, by being able to embrace roles unacceptable to stars on the level of Grant, Brando, et al. If you take Joe Dallesandro, for example, you're privy to the work of Serge Gainsbourg, Paul Morrissey, John Waters, Mika Kaurismaki, Louis Malle, and Jacques Rivette in scenes of sexual honesty that makes "Last Tango" seem tame.

A major star today would be hard-pressed to enjoy such company. Jude Law may epitomize male beauty, but he's been limited to mediocrities like Sam Mendes, Martin Scorsese's later work, Mike Nichols, Anthony Minghella, and other eminently "tasteful" directors. Wong Kar-Wai and David Cronenberg are the only ones coming anywhere near true cinematic gift-giving. Law is a European, and so too was Alain Delon forty years ago, and yet he managed to work with talent as disparate as Jean-Pierre Melville, Luchino Visconti, and Michelangelo Antonioni.

With modern actors we have no shortage in the beauty department, but finding them in films you're not embarrassed about watching becomes more difficult. I've tried to like Paul Walker, and God knows watching him take off his shirt isn't a chore, but with the exception of "Running Scared" and "Joyride" he hasn't done anything even half-way interesting. I genuinely enjoyed "Into the Blue" but Walker certainly isn't seeking out work that could be considered illuminating by anyone. The equally hunky Chris Evans gives me a better time with his acting, but the only thing he's done that rises above being merely entertaining is "Sunshine." His co-star Cillian Murphy has fared better, being one of the very few established actors to land in a Ken Loach film.

Murphy, a European, is joined by a handful of other beauties who've managed, or are managing, to carve out interesting careers for themselves. The most major I suppose would be Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Gregoire Colin. Rhys-Meyers has done surprisingly daring work in films by Todd Haynes, Mike Figgis, Michael Radford, and Mike Hodges, while Colin has crafted for himself one of the finest careers of the last decade. Not only is he a regular of Claire Denis, but he's worked alongside Jacques Rivette and Catherine Breillat. (Breillat is certainly no stranger to male beauty, and I'm very curious to see what Fu'ad Ait Aattou does after having starred in Breillat's "The Last Mistress.")

Next on the totem pole you'd have Gaspard Ulliel and Louis Garrel. Garrel may be the benefit of nepotism in Philippe Garrel, but he's also found himself in films by Christophe Honore, Bernardo Bertolucci, and a short by Ozon, while Ulliel has graced films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Gus Van Sant, and Andre Techine. I would mention the boys in Van Sant's recent films if any of them seemed to continue acting beyond his films, but I hope that Johan Libereau, of Techine's "Witnesses," continues his career. Jamie Bell has worked with both David Gordon Green and Thomas Vinterberg, and there are a handful of other Brits making miniature waves that I've been noticing -- Eddie Redmayne (Tom Kalin's "Savage Grace"), Ben Whishaw (Tom Tykwer's "Perfume," Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There," an upcoming Jane Campion film), and Andrew Garfield (the acclaimed "Boy A," and the new Terry Gilliam film, and while it may be lousy, he's also in "The Other Boleyn Girl" with Redmayne).

The American side of things may not look quite as stellar, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Pitt in particular are little beacons of hope. Levitt made a huge impression with Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin" and went on to make a few noble attempts in "Brick" and "The Lookout" before settling on Kimberly Peirce's newest "Stop-Loss." Pitt is a real daredevil, having worked with Gus Van Sant, Bernardo Bertolucci, Asia Argento, Tom DiCillo, Michael Haneke, and Abel Ferrara. I only wish that Johnathon Schaech kept getting parts outside of the horror movies he's writing now.

While these are the ones I've been most interested in, there are still the others who bring me occasional pleasure: Zac Efron (in the new Richard Linklater movie), Channing Tatum, Adam Brody, and James Franco (who does too many historical bores but who makes it up with Altman, Nic Cage's "Sonny," and new movies by Gus Van Sant and David Gordon Green).

Dexter

2008-07-03T23:38:00.005-05:00

Dexter (season two)

While "Dexter" most closely resembles a police procedural, tonally it has more in common with the overarching theme of death that has hovered over TV throughout the Bush administration -- Michael C. Hall's previous "Six Feet Under" and "Dead Like Me." Its deadpan comic tone could be off-putting to some -- not to mention the morally questionable sympathy we feel for a serial killer who justifies his killings -- but there's more to the show than the artfully conceived murders and plot tensions. While its main concern is those who are unable to feel -- it uses father-son psychological simplicity to explain Dexter's need to murder -- it also touches on topicality with degrees of restraint, such as the episode where a former special ops homicide detective has a confrontation with a fellow former operative who's been "fucked-up" by his military service. It also has some kind of idea as to the reality of single life, dating, and relationships -- spanning from giggling children to hook-ups in gyms, and when it concerns inter-generational dating it's decidedly mature.

While its cleverness distances itself from human emotion, it attempts, theoretically, to deal with spiritual deadness. And while my own feeling is that the show doesn't attain the spiritual heights it occasionally ponders about (and while sometimes it uses Dexter's past father-son experience as too much of a present-day indicator) it nevertheless remains thoroughly entertaining as a not-quite-genre piece.

As with "Prison Break" it introduces an FBI investigator who livens up the show, although as opposed to the intensity provided by William Fichtner in the former, the agent on "Dexter" is played with relaxed, breezy intelligence, and -- dare I say -- sexiness, a characterization of a father-type figure to Dexter's sister, who muses on the perfection of Chopin and takes time to pause and reflect on exactly which animal cracker he's pulled out of the box. (It came as a complete shock to me when I looked up the actor and discovered it was Keith Carradine; in my head I've always associated Carradine with the shapeless grit of '70s genre movies. It's a perfect example of an actor surprising you and exposing your own narrow-mindedness -- he's extraordinary.)

In the second season, which I've just finished, the show both smartly, and to its detriment, moves away from the mechanics of Dexter's killing and into the idea of "love" and its implications, for the majority of the characters: Dexter's relationship with his girlfriend; his girlfriend's relationship with her mother; Dexter's sister's relationship with Carradine; their boss's relationship with Sgt. Doakes. It serves to bring Dexter's murders close to those around him, and in the process slowly begins to lose the distance the series began with. As Dexter begins to feel, sloppiness ensues; the actions of those around him are affected. The genre ingenuity of the show may not be sustaining in and of itself; with the new, more personal aspect even scenes with Dexter's girlfriend and her mother maintain interest.

We also begin to question the morality of Dexter's actions, even though the show somewhat sneakily allows Dexter to remain a hero while evading his captors. Throughout the show I've never really felt relief from one of Dexter's kills, and I've never really felt complicit, either; but with the storyline of his psychotic girlfriend the writers have effectively provided the first death that we've, as an audience, been anticipating and hoping for; through her annoying British accent and her crazy-bitch conniving she's provided a foil for Dexter that we can't help but despise. There's a difference between what the show's writers do here and what, say, Tobe Hooper does in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- in that film, he makes his characters so annoying that you want them to be murdered, even though they're innocents. To my mind that's revolting; what the show's writers are doing with "Dexter" is essentially what Shakespeare had done hundreds of years ago, use death as a nasty punishment for someone who had it coming.

Charlie Wilson's War

2008-07-03T02:32:00.004-05:00

Charlie Wilson's War (2007, Mike Nichols)
Mike Nichols' films often feel to me as if they're aimed at garnering the approval of the people they're about -- even when they're satirical or critical it's never really ruthless, and it's done in such a way that these hypothetical moviegoers can jab their fellow viewers as they note how delightful a representation it is they're watching; movies made for moviegoers who delight in feeling, as Tom Hanks does as he reads the news as it comes off the wire, that they're a step ahead of the rest of the world, when in reality they're slaves to their own addiction to knowingness.

At its best, "Charlie Wilson's War" has a loose, collaborative feel -- and certainly Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman bring a great deal to the table -- and yet I can't help but feel that Nichols is equally interested in affiliating himself with positions of power as he is with telling an entertaining story (which, with his fidelity to big-name writers, is surely the intent of his moviemaking). Whether it's the casting of empty movie stars like Julia Roberts or the questionably triumphant tone he takes in filming war scenes, there's a quality to Nichols' films that is decidedly middle-brow, and if that's too crude a criticism, then it simply feels like Nichols isn't content on satisfying his storytelling urges -- he wants attention as he does it.

It's often the case that I don't feel Nichols' films have any deep reason for existing -- they don't provide an emotional value of any recognizable sort, and even his most superficially human films -- "Wit," "Angels in America" -- rely on intellectual heavy-lifting, mostly from theater ("Wit" is ostensibly about a cancer patient; in reality it's a filmed play about a professor's love for language). I'd be hard-pressed to think of an expressive moment in any of Nichols' films aside from the Carly Simon song at the end of "Heartburn."

Nichols can, at times, throw in a sensitive line-reading or two -- there's a great one about how America starts games it doesn't want to finish, and then leaves while the ball is still bouncing -- and there are moments, like when Hanks visits Pakistan for the first time, that you can see Nichols is trying to show that politics have the power to change things. And yet surrounding it we've got a director who loves drama so much that he doesn't bother to tell us anything about life.

The Line of Beauty

2008-06-30T19:51:00.007-05:00

The Line of Beauty (2006, Saul Dibb)
If the pleasure of reading and film watching differ, then books are more closely like lovers: we create them in large part in our minds, and the act of reading is sexual in the sense that we collaborate with the words on the page, in the same way as we do in sex with our partner. We control the speed at which we read; with a film, we are slaves to the tempo, we allow sensations to wash over us. That extra effort involved in reading may be why we grow so attached to books, and to characters. I think Saul Dibb's interpretation of Alan Hollinghurst's "Line of Beauty" novel does some justice to that pleasure we derive from reading. Fittingly divided into a three-part mini-series format, the segments are not unlike novel chapters, and while I wouldn't describe Dibb's film as epic, he does, by the nature of his allowed time, present enough different characters and points of story to make us feel as if we're leaving something behind. He specializes in a kind of ache, the combination of stiff BBC values and the romanticism of New Order and Spandau Ballet.

I'm not sure if gay life in the '80s is the most profound dramatic subject matter in recent history, but it's certainly what I respond most strongly to, and it's rich for creating drama. This, in Britain, has to its advantage the backdrop of pride and hypocrisy in government, the unrelenting AIDS, and a drug- and sex-fueled nightlife for young people. The film accurately presents the camaraderie lifestyle of gays that seems in decline now; men of all ages, young and beautiful and old and decrepit, swimming in all-male beaches. The charming duplicitous nature of some men who have sex with men is beautifully portrayed by one storyline concerning an exotic, gorgeous Lebanese heir (Alex Wyndham) who feigns heterosexuality to the outside world as he indulges in cocaine and orgies with any men who want him. I admire how the film doesn't moralize with sex or drugs; my own moral compass gets uneasy when I see decadent cocaine use and casual sex, but the film rightly allows its characters their pleasure, regardless of the foreboding we may sense knowing more than the characters do. The main Nick character, who is taken in by the rich political family, is at one point on the receiving end of a critical speech about the leeching nature of gays, and the sense of depression is finely wrought out, as he is in the unfortunate position of being somewhat beholden to the family and having no option but to take the abuse and quietly slink away.

My So-Called Life

2008-06-26T17:20:00.005-05:00

I've been watching a lot of "My So-Called Life" lately, which for me is the most accurate teen drama, even if at times it emotionally feels more sophisticated than the teenagers I went to school with. It specializes in mixed-up, unexplainable emotions, and unlike most shows about teenagers it's the rare drama where the adults are as complex as their children. You get as wrapped up in Angela's parents' dilemmas -- should her father start a career as a chef mid-life? Is her mother too skeptical? -- as you are in her ongoing love for Jordan Catalano. It is a highly realistic show in style, and yet there have been occasional moments, not unlike the opening credit sequence with whispers "Go... now... go!", that work their way into the floating free-for-all of dream states. It went where no other family drama went before, daring to ruminate on existential crises such as Angela's narration, "People always say how you should be yourself. Like your self is this definite thing, like a toaster or something. Like you know what it is, even."

Georgia Rule, Romance

2008-06-17T03:48:00.001-05:00

Georgia Rule (2007, Garry Marshall)
What fond memories I have of the acting in "Overboard," the comic exaggeration and artifice in Goldie Hawn's performance, is regrettably tempered with Marshall's weirdly and alternately sensational and conservative world-view and at the same time lack of overall point of view. Lindsay Lohan's character says she was molested when she was young, and throughout the movie we're not sure if we believe her or not, she keeps changing her story and characters flip-flop with their own minds. That's strange enough for a Hollywood entertainment, and it's stranger still when Lohan wrestles with a pre-teen boy only to point out that he's "hard," before venturing on a fishing trip with a local stud where she provides his first glimpse of a vagina. It's very hard to swallow a drama where the only sane character is a veterinarian who treats people, which uses a was-she-wasn't-she sex abuse question to bring home family values.

Romance (1999, Catherine Breillat)
I would say that this is the gentlest Breillat film that I've seen, and in this case the gentleness includes images of erect penises, hairy pubis, ejaculate, and a newborn exiting a vagina in close-up. To act in a Breillat film must be something, because so much of the words are given to us in narration. The acting, and for this film it's coming mostly from Caroline Ducey, relies heavily on the face, in looking, and in the placement of the body, as in the graceful poses she assumes when being tied up. Breillat is a serious philosopher, much like Bergman in the statements that get made in her films, a poet of the interior thoughts rarely expressed. In her explicitness, which is never sensational (though it may accurately be labeled bold), she invites us to a greater degree of intimacy and a kind of collaboration with her as we notice and react to the private realm she exposes to us. There is a major lack of judgment on her part, to the degree that what may come across as shocking, even degenerate behavior -- much adultery, even a form of prostitution decided on a whim -- is viewed with sensitized eyes. While her plot would sound illogical if explained -- a partnership that includes rigid refusals of sex -- it, as well as her anarchist streak which is brought out in the finale and complimented with a quick poetry, exists in a world that makes sense, not particularly emotionally, or even really philosophically or sociologically; it makes sense in a more active, inner way -- biologically.

Criminal Lovers

2008-06-16T00:43:00.000-05:00

Criminal Lovers (1999, Francois Ozon)
Superficially similar to "Badlands" and "Bonnie & Clyde" but stylistically closer to the gleeful depravity of John Waters. I have only seen one Ozon movie prior to this, the slight, touching "Time to Leave," and from what I gather part of Ozon's shtick is how he effortlessly jumps from style to style; his "5x2" is apparently told in reverse, and here he skillfully tackles another kind of narrative ingenuity in having the lead-up to their opening murder told in snippets, after they become makeshift prisoners to a forest-dweller possibly intent on administering his own brand of justice. You couldn't call "Criminal Lovers" a satire the way they do "Natural Born Killers," but the sensibility it has is decidedly over-the-top -- certain gestures and facial expressions will be accompanied by a dramatic swell of the score, and some scenes that would be considered serious elsewhere -- sex, escape -- are played triumphantly. The fable aspect of the film brought to mind some of the cartooniness of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Ozon has a definite talent for mounting tension, and for the playful mix of repulsion and erotica.

The Walker

2008-06-15T20:36:00.000-05:00

The Walker (2007, Paul Schrader)
It's easy to present a mood of stylish decadence with romantic underpinnings when you use a Bryan Ferry song repeatedly throughout, and while Schrader is at times a definite stylist -- and while this film heavily recalls the sharp atmospherics of "Light Sleeper," even though the plot bears closer similarity to "American Gigolo" -- his film, though certainly intended to incorporate the disillusionment of the public with the avarice of behind-the-scenes politicos, comes across as an anachronism in film form. Woody Harrelson's performance as "The Walker," a specialized social position of "walking" rich women from place to place, is the kind of leisurely Southern put-on that we'd look for in noirs of the '50s, and the obscureness of his job -- and, I assume, its diminishing role in the current high-class landscape -- belongs in old Hollywood. Schrader's bordering-on-obsessional interest in homosexuality, like Neil Jordan's, continues to permeate his work; I don't mean it as a criticism, because Schrader clearly takes it seriously and there's nothing in his film or his sensibility that could be accused of being derisive or exploitive, although certainly his version of homosexuality is of the rough, manly steaminess of the '70s, however fussy of a dresser Harrelson's walker may be.

Be Kind Rewind, Metropolitan, A Sight for Sore Eyes

2008-06-15T00:56:00.000-05:00

Be Kind Rewind (2008, Michel Gondry)
Perhaps lacking in plot but mostly enjoyable, it has worthwhile things to say about small business, creativity, and community -- and if those aren't ingredients for making a movie "human," I don't know what is. The presence of Jack Black may make people expect obnoxious slapstick, but this rings closer to Richard Linklater's "School of Rock," a mostly-mainstream light comedy that's really an excuse to espouse underdog values to a mass audience.

Metropolitan (1990, Whit Stillman)
While it's mostly genial, and admittedly the last little bit has some good absurdist one-liners, I feel like there are better movies about young college folk having discussions about life; albeit not as lofty, you may look to what has unfortunately been deemed "mumblecore" and been widely denigrated for examples of young people struggling with their own existence and love lives. While their dialogue is less precise than Stillman's, their aims are more of stilted bursts of expression and young thought processes, however selfish and pretentious they may be. Stillman's characters have the kinds of discussions that screenwriter's think up, and while he thankfully doesn't ridicule these rich Manhattan whites in the current fashionable mode, his eye and ear is less critical than I would like. I find his visuals to be bland, along with the majority of his actors (Chris Eigeman excepted), and his insights are closer to that of a director than a human being.

A Sight for Sore Eyes (2003, Gilles Bourdos)
Mostly a mood piece, but when the mood is informed by one of the cinematographers of "In the Mood for Love," the very fine score by Alexandre Desplat, a story by Ruth Rendell, and the big dark eyes of Gregoire Colin, mood is mostly enough. It may short-change the considerable accomplishments of the film not to note the confidence the director shows in allowing his story to progress quite slowly; a fair share of time is allotted to scenes of Colin, an artist, to spray paint walls and engage in other kinds of physical art-making. An equal amount of consideration is given to simple moments in life. The murders that occur are at first deaths of necessity, and from there morph into continual acts of covering-up until eventually becoming merely preferential. Although early scenes depict childhood tragedies for its main stars, the story mostly avoids psychological explanations, either for murder or the emotional attachment the two young characters develop for each other. The look of the film is somewhat stunning; objects that obstruct view, gorgeous, minimal white space. While the string of deaths don't attain the awful Greek tragedy accumulation that the best murder dramas do, the mess and degeneration -- slow, mostly wordless -- rises above the beautiful moodiness.

Raising Victor Vargas

2008-06-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

Raising Victor Vargas (2002, Peter Sollett)
By turns charming and touching in a lightly humanist way, "Raising Victor Vargas" gently follows an arc of the title character and a budding love interest. One might say the entire film is "budding"; there are similarities to Martin Scorsese, if not exactly in content or approach, but the poor-if-not-squalid household and ne'er-do-well youngsters brings to mind a PG-13 "Mean Streets" while the casting of Victor's grandmother character, who enjoys listening to one of her grandsons play the piano but does not enjoy catching him popping one off in the bathroom, reminded me a lot of the same kind of entertaining, easily-upsetting mother character in "Goodfellas." I wouldn't say that the honest reality of this film would compare to the same in, say, Ken Loach's "Sweet Sixteen" -- I must say I find it odd that the fighting in the household centers around teenagers learning about sex, and not about things like lack of money or weather too warm for the boys to ever wear shirts. You won't learn anything about life from watching it, but it's pleasant enough to observe for a while.

Cold Showers

2008-06-12T13:55:00.000-05:00

Cold Showers (2005, Antony Cordier)
After an aborted attempt to both assess Sydney Pollack's career and simply be entertained by watching "The Firm" (possibly not the best place to start, given that it ranks 17th on his best-to-worst movies on IMDb), I switched to "Cold Showers," in the hopes that it might actually have something to say, or some feeling to express. Thankfully, it does. Treading along what's almost a French cliche, that of the threesome, the movie takes a relatively thorough look at a young couple who introduce a second boy into their sex games. While there are a couple scenes of threesome sex, it's much more about the home life of Johan Libereau (the star of the upcoming Andre Techine film, "Witnesses," and my reason for renting the movie); the sex is, like his judo tournaments, his extra-curricular activity of choice, but it's made more complex and upsetting with the introduction of the third. Although the film is rounded enough to tackle questions of class difference and sexual freedom it more closely concerns itself with the choices people make regarding relationships, their reactions, and how they change things from being the way they once were.

Code Unknown, Son of Gascogne

2008-06-11T19:50:00.000-05:00

Code Unknown (2000, Michael Haneke)
Michael Haneke, like Stanley Kubrick, is a director I feel polarized about in his extremities: he's profound and shallow at once, a technical wizard with oh-so-serious commentary that comes to us through cruelty. He's not as bloated as Kubrick -- those bloated "meanings" in Kubrick's films are ultimately worthless, impressive cinematically but empty -- in that he addresses somewhat thoughtful issues seriously, but it's hard to discern whether it's the issues he takes seriously or his minimal long-take aesthetic. "The Piano Teacher" was too vile for me to handle; I have some gay friends who love it, like John Waters does, presumably for the outrageous nastiness perpetrated by its pint-sized redheaded vixen. I thought "Cache" was an original statement, even considering its "surveillance" theme is the kind of thing that college students dust off for brownie points, and I found myself admiring "Funny Games U.S." despite most American critics attacking it for the kinds of things I normally despise in other movies. "Code Unknown," closer to "Cache," is sort of like a serious-minded "Crash," a movie dealing with race and people being victimized with a relatively subdued approach.

Son of Gascogne (1995, Pascal Aubier)
A charming French film farce which treads two lines simultaneously, that of the history of New Wave (by setting the story around the possible son of a fictitious French film star, incorporating '60s film clips and recreations a la "The Dreamers") and of the light love story between the boy and a girl. The points it makes about the metaphorically "lost" children of the New Wave -- in essence, young cinephiles in the '90s, or simply young lovers in the '90s -- aren't hammered home, but rather made felt through the film's attachment to the boy and the girl. It's a New Wave film about the New Wave. Just look at his shirts!

Bob Dylan, Judy Collins

2007-12-13T23:31:00.000-06:00

As a teenager I was a dedicated Bob Dylan fan; I loved his early, gently poetic folk, I loved his angry, psychedelic stream-of-consciousness rock period, I loved his temporary country guise, I loved his return to folk with Blood on the Tracks and his exotic Desire. I loved the anger in the Christian albums, and I loved his second phase as a songwriter who spits out Americana gems, from Oh Mercy to Modern Times. But part of me has tended towards the long, slow, wry Leonard Cohen, who, like Bryan Ferry, has adapted his lyrical genius into definite and decadent styles. Perhaps even more than these two masters, though, I have adored the majestic Judy Collins, who encompasses both songwriters while including the disparate genius that emanates from Jacques Brel, Stephen Sondheim, and Kurt Weill, not to mention Joni Mitchell, more open to experimentation than either Dylan or Cohen.

There is something almost unspeakably touching about the string-laden interpretations of great songs that Collins excels at, and in her obvious love for the material she works with. When I was young I considered Collins a very minor musician, perhaps even a singer who didn't "get" Dylan the way I "got" him. I've long since come to recognize this same unpleasant, fundamental, and uneducated approach to Dylan in other Dylan fans -- a prime example would be with Bryan Ferry's recent Dylanesque, a hit-or-miss collection of Dylan songs that have some moments which are spectacular and some of which are blase, which received mostly vitriol from Dylan aficionados. But it's the offhandedness with which Ferry interprets Dylan that is seemingly misinterpreted as being shallow; this is the same feeling I had with Collins when I was young. All I could see was the original, and compared to it, the interpretation seemed merely thin. It took years before I realized that what I considered minor, thin, and pale in comparison to the original was actually much more subtle and gentle -- something so rare and delicate that it could only be misinterpreted.

It's this delicateness that leads to many female singers being marginalized -- k.d. lang and Nanci Griffith may be the two most prominent, two singers working on the level of Billie Holiday. (I would compare them to Dolly Parton if Parton herself wasn't so marginalized.) For women who don't perform with the fervor of Nina Simone or the hard-edged world-weariness of Lucinda Williams, there is little place for recognition. Music criticism is a boy's game, and the boys like women who either act like men or who occupy an extreme version of girliness -- this would explain why middle-aged hipster men can appreciate Astrud Gilberto or Francoise Hardy, but when faced with Collins will turn away.

"no country for old men"

2007-11-15T21:48:00.000-06:00

What I found with No Country for Old Men was exceedlingly well-paced and made, and, as with David Fincher's Zodiac, the film with the least amount of stylistic flair in the Coen brothers' career, similar to Fargo in that respect and in terms of the plot points concerning murder, highways, and bags full of money that must go unfulfilled (a cruel joke as well as a rejection of genre rules and a criticism of the act of theft rolled into one).

It is, in artistic terms, perhaps less successful than Zodiac (a film I didn't like) in pushing audiences into new territory, as that film did with its unusual, unjointed narrative style. Like the majority (all?) of the Coens' films, this one comes as a pre-mixed packet: that doesn't mean that the considerable amount of tension it musters is any less thrilling, or even that the film feels hermetically sealed. (And if it does, it's due to the sparse, controlled style of the film.) But you could never accuse the film of being messy -- it has a craftsman's specificity, but not an artist's heart. Expressions of feeling have never been a Coen strong point -- even heightened feeling, even feeling generated from artiface or from the point of view of character. They attempt to make big points by avoiding points at all, letting them suggest themselves by the film's sparseness; it's a movie that works on themes that you're not quite sure you understand. The idea of plot points involving money and violence and queer senses of nobility (even when it concerns fate as random as a coin-toss) seem to me hopelessly quaint, no matter how futuristic the murder weapon.

You're left asking yourself if the Coens (or McCarthy) are honing in old tropes for the prepackaged acclaim such quasi-philosophical notions will give them, or if it's their attempt to comment on genre (here, essentially a Western). No Country for Old Men may be the most thoroughly American film the Coens have made, and it exhalts itself on those big, hard ideas given to us through Westerns. It skimps on the details that matter and instead focus on plot-related visual details, and even when they're funny and important to the story that's being told (as in the the relation to keeping boots free of blood) they don't give us much to cling to outside of their formal elegance.