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October 04, 2005
A History of Violence
David Cronenberg, USA, 2005
Rating: 3.0
Is David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (screenplay by Josh
Olson and based on the 1997 graphic novel by John Wagner and Vincent
Locke) a serious examination of violence and its effect on a nuclear
American family, with satirical flourishes? Or is it a big thumb in the
eye of a violence-obsessed, sexually repressed, ravenously consumerist
American public? Sadly, it’s more the latter than the former. The setup
is certainly promising: Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), wife Edie (Maria
Bello), and their two children live an idyllic Hallmark life in vanilla,
homespun Millbrook, Indiana. Tom runs a diner, and one day two ruthless
scumbags try to rob the place. Tom dispatches the criminals with
shockingly proficient ease and becomes a reluctant media sensation ...
which draws unwanted attention from a group of Philly mobsters who show
up claiming Tom is actually a vicious killer named Joey Cusack. So
what’s the truth? A History of Violence works best dancing around
the ambiguity of Tom/Joey’s true identity. The notion of a Big Lie
tearing a family apart isn’t particularly fresh, but the tense dynamic
between Bello and Mortensen adds tactile weight to the conundrum.
Unfortunately, Cronenberg goes more for the exaggerated violence angle
and reduces the family crisis to secondary plot status. If we’d stayed
at the dinner table and avoided Tom’s bloody reconciliation with his
past, A History of Violence might have had something more
substantial to say about its titular subject, as opposed to simply
wallowing in the gore of its own satirical cesspool.
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September 22, 2005
Lord of War
Andrew Niccol, USA, 2005
Rating: 2.8
Assuming the assertion “based on actual events” is some badge of honor
for cred-conscious Hollywood action flicks, Lord of War
inexplicably embraces this hard-hitting tagline while breaking myriad
rules of the “raw and real” school of filmmaking. Nicolas Cage plays the
amoral Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer who makes a mint when the Cold War
comes to an end. Yuri is detached from the carnage wrought by the
weapons he procures for everyone from sadistic African warlords to
small-time thugs. Since director Andrew Niccols and company lack the
muscle or desire to follow through on a Salvador-brutal
examination of dark places in this world and the people who leach off of
bloody entanglements, we get innumerable clichés and obvious plot
developments. Yuri has a screw-up younger brother (the talented Jared
Leto) who wants to cook in the family restaurant but has to go on jobs
with his older sibling to pay for a debilitating cocaine habit. Yuri’s
really tight with his brother... Yeah, you know what’s coming. Then
there’s the trophy wife (a wasted Bridget Moynahan) who remains clueless
about how her husband affords such a lavish lifestyle for her and their
stock cute, mostly mute and barely sketched young son. She has a major
guilt trip when she finds out the truth and (in credulity-straining
fashion) convinces Yuri to “go straight” -- if only for a little while.
If Lord of War cut out the pointless supporting roles (who by
film’s end have zero impact of Yuri’s utterly non-transformative
character development) and focused instead on the motley crew of people
Yuri meets during an average day for an international arms dealer,
Lord of War might have measured up to something more than a wannabe
expose on the economic engine that drives global conflicts. Imagine
Oliver Stone, circa 1985, with this story... the possibilities are
staggering.
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August 29, 2005
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Judd Apatow, USA, 2005
Rating: 3.5
Likable Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) never grew up. His apartment is
filled with toys, comic books and action figures. He rides a bike to his
job at a consumer electronics store and loves to unwind after work by
playing video games. And, as the title of the movie gives away, Andy has
never had intercourse. Rather than offer a one-note gag about Andy and a
trio of overly eager coworkers trying to assist him in taking a bold
step toward adulthood, Judd Apatow’s 40-Year-Old Virgin opts
instead for moral instruction. Thus, the trio of horny friends will
learn from Andy’s celibacy and become better people (more or less) by
the film’s end. Andy, naturally, will find an incredibly understanding
woman (played by the wonderful Catherine Keener, in this case) to
slow-walk him through the whole mating courtship process. Clichéd plot
turns like the obligatory Big Fight and inevitable Makeup detract from
Virgin’s effectiveness. But the laughs are plentiful (especially
a painfully funny hair-waxing sequence and a visit to a planned
parenthood meeting) and Carell -- who stole nearly every scene in
Anchorman
that he appeared in -- is definitely an average schmo you can root for.
Like Anchorman, Virgin mixes the bizarre with the
pedestrian. But it’s a better film, with richer characters and just as
many laugh-out-loud moments.
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August 1, 2005
Murderball
Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro, USA, 2005
Rating: 4.0
Based on a Maxim magazine article by Dana Adam Shapiro, the documentary
Murderball wheels the viewer headlong into the world of quadriplegic
rugby, a fast-paced contest played out, as the name suggests, by men in
wheelchairs (the term "quadriplegic" applies to impairment, not necessarily
paralysis, in all four limbs). Since the film is receiving widespread release,
it's a cinch that the directors establish a respectful and inspirational tone,
but Murderball avoids the mawkish sentimentality one half-expects: Your
typical feel-good sports doc a la Hoop Dreams, this isn't. But it does
build, and maintain, a surprisingly strong level of suspense, via a Heaven-sent
narrative that tracks the highly competitive Team USA from the 2002 Wheelchair
Rugby World Championships in Sweden to the 2004 Paralympics in Athens. It helps,
too, that Team USA has a perfect foil in loudmouthed Joe Soares, a former USA
player who now coaches the Canadian team after being cut from the American
roster. But Murderball isn't really about the climactic showdown between
the USA and Canada in Athens: It's about the steely determination shown by
figures like Soares, Mark Zupan (a brash, aggressive fireball with the tattoos
and presence to give Henry Rollins pause), Bob Lujano (good-natured despite his
lack of limbs) and others -- and about the ways in which their approaches to the
game mirror their approaches to life. The film is given additional heft by the
filmmakers' decision to parallel their primary narrative with the story of a
newly paralyzed motocross enthusiast at the very beginning of his journey of
adjustment. Ultimately, Murderball is less a standard sports documentary
than a rousing profile of men for whom crashing into each other in wheelchairs
is much more than a game -- it's an extension of their will to live.
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Kevin Forest Moreau
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May 11, 2005
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Alex Gibney, USA, 2004
Rating: 3.0
Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, based on the
book by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter
Elkind, engages in a bit of agitprop against the free market system,
which is about as bold a stance as the documentary takes in examining
the most stunning collapse of a large corporation in American history.
That greed drove top executives at Enron to fabricate earnings and then
cash in once the bloated stock price rose, all the while sticking the
lower-ranking employees with worthless 401(k)s when the bottom fell out,
is hardly shocking; anyone with a passing interest in corporate scandal
has heard all of the information divulged here. The Smartest Guys in
the Room simply compiles the various reports and wraps them in an
entertaining package. But there’s no smoking gun, no heretofore-unknown
document (blame the shredding machines at accounting firm Arthur
Anderson) that exposes a Machiavellian plot to fleece shareholders. What
we do learn is the obvious: Without checks and balances, corruption
happens. There’s no villain on whom to pin this debacle -- just typical
businesspeople making as much money as they can and hoping they don’t
get caught in the process. Which is actually a more alarming notion than
if there had been some grand conspiracy at play. Alas, it was just
business as usual, and that's a depressing but hardly a revelatory
truth.
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May 11, 2005
A Love Song For Bobby Long
Shainee Gabel, USA, 2004
Rating: 2.8
Based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps,
A Love Song For Bobby Long (adapted by director Shainee Gabel)
has a location, New Orleans, that's incredibly evocative, if not easy to
capture the essence of on screen. But in telling the story of an
alcoholic, down-and-out former college lit professor (John Travolta, in
top ham-fisted form in the titular role), his equally under-motivated
protégé Lawson Pines (Gabriel Macht) and a young woman named Pursy (Scarlett
Johansson) who enters their lives, the film fails to rise above cliché
and obvious plot turns. Bobby and Lawson are squatters in a house owned
by Pursy’s estranged mother, who has recently passed away and left the
property to her daughter. According to the will, Bobby and Lawson can
remain in the house for one year, and then Pursy can give the pair the
boot if she so chooses. Naturally, the three bond, with Bobby taking on
a more paternal air and Lawson struggling to figure out what he should
do about his feelings for the fetching but considerably younger Pursy.
There are no surprises here, and the overly poetic voiceover by Macht
and pointless “name the author of that quote” English major games
quickly grow wearisome. Johansson does a nice job revealing the tough
exterior/tender heart of Pursy, and the city is photographed in a
beautifully squalid manner. But Bobby Long fails to hit enough of
the right notes to ring true.
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May 02, 2005
Primer
Shane Carruth, USA, 2003
Rating: 3.0
Filmmaker Shane Carruth claims his speculative sci-fi debut, Primer, was
made for the “cost of a used car.” Winning the Grand Jury prize at the 2004
Sundance Film Festival should ensure Carruth covers his z-budget expenses. As
notable for its shoestring DIY backstory as well as its tech-heavy dialogue,
Primer takes a familiar premise -- time travel -- and attempts to contain it
within a semi-plausible set of rules derived from modern physics. Thus, we
follow aspiring inventors, Aaron (Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), who
unexpectedly create a device that can move objects through discrete segments of
time, prodding the two day-job engineers to cash in accrued sick time and begin
playing the stock market. Unfortunately, nagging issues like spatial continuity
and space-time paradoxes trip up the duo’s seemingly foolproof plan to get a
jump on Wall Street and retire before 40. Double Aarons and Abes run amok, and
by the end of the film, whatever trust the pair had established has been
completely shattered. Carruth does a solid job with the technical aspects of
Primer and, even though it’s still a little too self-consciously obtuse, the
film satisfactorily presents an intriguing take on what mere mortals might do if
given God-like prescience. Carruth’s weakness is in telling a compelling
narrative and crafting interesting, three-dimensional characters: Aaron and Abe
are fairly interchangeable -- one has a wife and child, but both wear the
Dilbert uniform and their motivations are transparently similar. The
cat-and-mouse games between the doubles and the real McCoys are also regrettably
underplayed. As a Joe Average litmus test, this reviewer invited B-movie junkie
Clemenza to watch Primer. Less than halfway
through the lean, 75-minute running time, Clemenza had hooked the microwave to
the toaster and successfully managed to pull his own double out of some future
time stream, which he then dispatched to watch the remainder of the film in his
place. If nothing else, Primer is a speculatively engaging science
project.
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May 02, 2005
Undertow
David Gordon Green, USA, 2004
Rating: 2.9
Undertow, David Gordon Green’s third feature, is an interesting mix of
poetically sinister Southern Gothic storytelling and indebted inspiration
derived from Charles Laughton's bravura 1955 film The Night of the Hunter.
Green’s debut, George Washington, and the young director’s follow-up,
All the
Real Girls, moved along a plotless line of barely-there narrative lyricism.
Green focused on everyday life, with the occasional shocking turn, couching his
dialogue in an artificially grand mode and generally making it all work thanks
to an auteur’s viewpoint and clear-eyed sense of purpose. Undertow
retains the flowery dialogue but is weighed down by something Green’s never
tackled before: Plot. Evil Uncle Deel (Josh Lucas) shows up at the family farm
of his widowed brother, John (Dermot Mulroney), who’s having difficulty raising
his two boys. Deel offers John his services in return for room and board, but
what he’s really after is a clutch of gold coins left by their father.
Unsurprisingly, violence ensues, and soon the two boys (young Devon Alan and
Billy Elliot’s Jamie Bell) are on the run, coins in hand and an angry Deel
hot on their heels. What's surprising is how much momentum Undertow loses
after the chase begins. Green takes too-frequent time-outs to spotlight
oddball Southern folks Deel and the boys meet on their respective ways. And,
unlike Night of the Hunter, there’s no particular viewpoint. We follow
the boys for a bit, then Deel. Even the inevitable showdown lacks punch, since
Green is trying too hard to work in an earlier referenced link between the gold
coins and Charon -- the ferryman for the dead in Greek mythology. What saves the
film from being dragged down to an even lower rating is the photography of Green
mainstay Tim Orr, and solid acting from its principals.
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May 02, 2005
2046
Wong Kar-Wai, China / Italy / France / Hong Kong, 2004
Rating: 3.5
In the year 2047, Hong Kong will lose its autonomy to the Chinese government.
When the British pulled out in 1997, Hong Kong was granted a "One Country, Two
Systems" policy for 50 years. Wong Kar-Wai, whose edgy, fun 1994 effort
Chungking Express captured the giddy feeling preceding the British handover,
latches onto the year 2046 in an interesting manner. During the early 1960s,
it's a room number shared by trysting lovers in the director’s 2000 feature
In the Mood for Love. In late 1966, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who
was involved in the affair and has since been jilted, tries to rent room 2046,
but it is temporarily unavailable (due to a murder) and he is forced to take
room 2047 -- which has a peephole that allows him to gaze upon the comings and
goings of room 2046. Chow, a writer, spends the next three years in a variety of
relationships, none of them as permanent or as profound as his earlier affair.
Chow also works on a tale set in a future time, in which a man is stuck on a
train, intercoursing with beautiful androids that, naturally, resemble the women
Chow is seeing in his life. Wong Kar-Wai ably conveys a sense of Chow being
haunted by past feelings and dreaming of a constrictive future, but trapped in
an unsatisfying present -- not unlike Hong Kong during the city’s 50-year “free”
period. When the future has already been decided for you, how much joy can one
derive from the present? Frustratingly, 2046 winds up caught in limbo
itself. The film is neither expansive enough to explore the various ideas,
metaphors and time-space concepts it posits, nor sufficiently brief to serve up
a focused, satisfying narrative. Perhaps on New Year’s Eve 2046, the film will
be shown in retrospective and carry an even richer meaning for its end-of-an-era
revelers.
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April 17, 2005
Dig!
Ondi Timoner, USA, 2003
Rating: 3.0
The fact that one of the main subjects of Ondi Timoner's
seven-years-in-the-making, warts-and-all documentary Dig! serves as the
film’s narrator sums up the entire project. It's obvious that Timoner was hoping
to catch a Beatles-Stones (or hell, even a Blur-Oasis) rivalry for wealth, glory
and fame between two up-and-coming West Coast rock bands, but the fact that
Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor gets the final word on the film's
central relationship -- his friendship-turned-rivalry with Anton Newcombe of
Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM) -- is a sort of concession on the filmmaker’s
part that maybe there wasn’t such a vicious competition between the two groups
after all. (The fact that neither band has attained widespread notoriety --
though the major label-backed Dandys keep getting close -- also undermines any
cultural cachet Timoner counted on accumulating as she tracked the Dandys and
BJM during the 1990s.) Dig! does offer a look at the issues, drugs and
dissimilar attitudes toward industry standards and practices that set the two
groups apart. But the film's main attraction is its focus on the fascinating
human train wreck that is Anton Newcombe. From a crippling heroin addiction to a
propensity for attacking audience members indifferent or insulting to his music,
Newcombe is framed by Timoner as a true enfant terrible. Why? Because it keeps
viewers glued to the screen. (Were there no moments of clarity during the entire
seven year stretch for the mercurial bandleader?) The seemingly well-adjusted
Dandys look like they’re having a ball, but that doesn’t translate nearly as
well, so Newcombe takes one for the film. Today, both bands are still recording,
making music and, presumably, avoiding people with digi-cams. Sounds like a
smart career move.
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April 05, 2005
Downfall
Oliver Hirschbiegel, Germany, 2004
Rating: 3.0
Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s examination of the last days of Hitler’s
life, is a structural mess. Rather than focusing on a single character, it
presents a chaotically jumbled narrative that leaps from the war-torn streets of
Berlin to the bunker where the Führer (a compelling, spittle-flying Bruno Ganz),
his lover Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) and various aides hunker down as Russian
forces encircle the city. Just because the situation in Berlin was insane
doesn’t mean the storyline has to follow suit. It’s not that Downfall’s
assorted plot threads are confusing; it’s just that no particular character is
given enough space to breathe. Additionally, Hirschbiegel’s choices regarding
which horrors to show and which to cut away from are bafflingly inconsistent. We
see limbs being sawed off from bodies on operating tables, but cut away from
Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) shooting his wife and then himself.
Hirschbiegel painfully lingers on Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) methodically
administering each of her unconscious children a cyanide capsule, but never
shows the corpses of Hitler and Braun. In telling such a complex yet widely
discussed tale, Hirschbiegel would have been better served sticking with one
principal lead and letting us see only what that person sees. And with the
recollections of Hitler’s private secretary Traudl Junge (played with doe-eyed
bafflement by Alexandra Maria Lara) still fresh in moviegoers’ minds thanks to
the documentary
Blind Spot,
the choice of whose version of events to dramatize seems obvious. Downfall
goes for an epic scope when an intimate viewpoint certainly would have proved
far more compelling and insightful.
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March 26, 2005
Feux Rouges (Red Lights)
Cédric Kahn, France, 2004
Rating: 3.0
Cédric Kahn’s Feux Rouges (Red Lights) is an “urbanites tested in the
wild” suspense thriller that relies too heavily on a whopper of a contrivance to
justify its big twist revelation at the end. Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin)
and his wife, Hélène (Carole Bouquet), set out from Paris on a long journey to
pick up their children from a camp. Hélène is the primary breadwinner; Antoine's
a binge-drinking underachiever. Testy conversation during the trip results in
Hélène abandoning their car and heading for a train station, while Antoine
knocks back whisky in a bar. Antoine tries to catch up with his wife at the
station but is too late, leading to another bar detour and an encounter with a
morose young man (Vincent Deniard) who inalterably changes the lives of the
unhappily married couple. Darroussin’s performance as the self-loathing Antoine
is expertly handled, conveying the right amount of impotence coupled with a
slow, simmering fury. And since Red Lights is ultimately about the
emasculated male reasserting his primacy in the domestic pecking order, it’s
crucial we pity Antoine but believe him capable of the subsequent actions that
validate his caveman-encoded DNA. Though the film’s resolution is too easily
debunked thanks to a highly improbable coincidence, Red Lights still nets
points for underplaying the violence and emphasizing the emotional distance
between a married couple who, after a dozen years together, have lost whatever
magic brought them together in the first place.
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March 21, 2005
End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
Michael Gramaglia, Jim Fields, USA, 2003
Rating: 3.4
The Story of the Ramones does a decent job of rehashing fairly common
knowledge for those interested in the seminal New York punk rock band: Guitarist
Johnny was a right wing control freak. Singer Joey was a hypersensitive romantic
geek who never nabbed the love of his life and suffered for his art. Bassist Dee
Dee was the soul of the band but also a self-destructive junkie. Original
drummer/band manager/album producer Tommy just wasn’t cut out for the rigors of
the touring lifestyle. Coincidentally, of the core four, Tommy’s the only one
still alive, with cancer claiming Johnny and Joey and an overdose knocking off
Dee Dee. Filmmakers Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields spend the majority of the
film's time examining the pre-history and early days of the band. We get a tour
of Forest Hills, Queens, and hear from those in the neighborhood with tangential
connections to the bandmates, and the groundbreaking mid-’70s CBGB club period
is well documented -- although the recounting of the drug- and drink-fueled Phil
Spector-produced End of the Century sessions is more depressing and
sordid than insightful or fascinating. The MTV-dominated ’80s and alterna-rock
’90s periods get a cursory glossing over, as drummers come and go and Dee Dee
bolts for an abortive rap career. Showing the Ramones' Hall of Fame acceptance
speech should put a nice bow on the chronicle, but it’s obvious the band's most
vital period happened decades earlier. Never being (or trying to be) a
particularly innovative band pretty much guaranteed a weird, time-warp existence
for the group, branded with bowl haircuts, leather jackets and denim jeans. In
the end, the best way to hear the story of the Ramones is to listen to their
first four albums. Everything the band felt, meant, and had to say is
encapsulated there better than it is in this interesting but inconsistent
documentary.
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March 11, 2005
Carandiru
Hector Babenco, Brazil / Argentina, 2003 (2004 U.S. Release)
Rating: 3.2
In detailing the events leading up to the October 2, 1992, prison riot
known as the Carandiru Massacre, Hector Babenco only bothers with
humanizing the victims (in this case, the prisoners) and gives no
insight into the riot squad that allegedly gunned down the defenseless
inmates. Babenco uses a sympathetic physician (Luis Carlos Vasconcelos)
as our window into the world of the men behind bars. In episodic
fashion, we get the back-story on several colorful convicts (most of
them innocent, mind you, according to their version of the facts), learn
about the assorted rivalries and inner workings of the drug trade, and
witness a “marriage” between two inmates (only after both get negative
results on their AIDS tests). And then a fight breaks out, which
escalates into a full-scale riot -- which is when the storm troopers
show up and indiscriminately massacre scores of fleeing or cornered
criminals. We are told at the end that only God, the riot squad and the
prisoners know what really happened that bloody day. Fine, but at least
putting a human face on the enforcers would have helped greatly in
rounding out the story. From a narrative standpoint, Carandiru’s
start-stop episodic structure dilutes its momentum. It also lacks either
the gritty, chaotic feel of Babenco’s best film, 1981’s Pixote,
or the fanciful poetic escapism that enhanced his most famous work,
Kiss of the Spider Woman. Babenco uses Carandiru to indict
the Brazilian prison system, but in failing to give equal weight to both
sides of the tragedy he leaves the viewer with more questions than
answers.
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March 09, 2005
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
Danny Leiner, USA, 2004
Rating: 3.1
Dude, Where's My White Castle? is a more apt title for this retread of
Danny Leiner’s 2000 drug-induced comedy Dude, Where's My Car? Two stoners
on a quest (in this case for burgers instead of a lost vehicle -- though the car
the titular leads uses gets swiped as well) learn a few lessons about life and
themselves along the way; this is hardly fresh material. What makes Harold
and Kumar so enjoyable, then, are the two leads (John Cho and Kal Penn,
respectively). And despite the fact that much ink has been spilled extolling the
film’s use of Asian- and-Indian-Americans as the leads and the fact that the
movie pokes fun at sundry racial stereotypes, this is quintessential gross-out
lowbrow fare with no deeper agenda. Thanks to the likability factor of Cho and
Penn and the various misadventures experienced by two roommates on a nighttime
fast-food binge, Harold and Kumar proves a worthwhile journey and breezes
along at less than ninety minutes. Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser, M.D.
fame
makes the most of an appearance as himself, tripping on acid and seeking
strippers. And a hospital sequence where Kumar shows off his deft medical skills
on a gunshot victim (even though he’s a complete slacker otherwise) is
hilarious. Harold and Kumar does exactly what the title says, but it’s in
reaching cheap-burger nirvana that the film proves a worthy entry into a genre
well-mined by Cheech and Chong two decades earlier.
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March 08, 2005
Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
Prachya Pinkaew, Thailand, 2003 (2005 U.S. Release)
Rating: 3.3
Ong-Bak is essentially a B-movie calling card for Thai martial artist
Tony Jaa, and as such it wisely sticks to a simple, bare-bones plot, the better
to focus the audience's attention on the considerable skills of its star. Rather
than stick the youthful Jaa into a credulity-stretching police drama, Ong-Bak
casts him as Ting, an earnest young villager in rural Thailand who has learned
the deadly martial art of muay thai from the village monks. Ting travels to the
big city when a thief makes off with the titular head of the village's Buddha
statue, and gets in a series of fights designed more to show off his skills than
to further the story -- many of them in a dimly lit fight club overseen by a
nefarious crime boss. A cowardly and conniving but ultimately good-hearted
sidekick named George and his mostly superfluous female con-artist partner help
Ting retrieve the head, and dispatch justice to the bad guys. There are no
surprises or complications, not even a romance to get in the way of the quest;
George's eventual redemption is as close as Ong-Bak gets to a subplot.
That leaves Pinkaew free to lavish attention on Jaa's lithe, angular form as
Ting leaps, kicks and elbows his opponents, and even runs across the tops of
their heads. The lack of plot clutter also allows the director to inject some
sly humor into his chase scenes (Ting leaps through a roll of barbed wire two
workers are conveniently carrying; George fends off a gang of attackers with a
knife, until a woman wanders into the frame selling knives). Ong-Bak is
no-frills escapist fun; it may be too slight to invite repeated viewings, but it
nonetheless whets the viewer's appetite for more of Jaa's low-key, boyish
charisma and visually appealing fight skills.
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Kevin Forest Moreau
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February 28, 2005
Mean Creek
Jacob Aaron Estes, USA, 2003
Rating: 3.4
[Editor's Note: Not that it's a gargantuan surprise, but this review
does give away Mean Creek's essential plot twist. Stop reading
now if you don't want to know what happens.] Jacob Aaron Estes’ debut
feature Mean Creek takes the familiar “trick-that-goes-to-far”
setup and applies it to a schoolyard bully who gets unexpectedly fatal
payback during a Saturday afternoon boat trip. The performances from the
young actors are commendable, even if the dialogue they’re forced to
speak seems a bit too obvious and stagy at times. Estes strives for a
seemingly curious mix of the eerie amorality that pervaded Tim Hunter's
The River's Edge and the loss-of-innocence nostalgia of Rob
Reiner’s Stand by Me. The main drawback is the antagonist/victim
being punished. As played by heavyset, baby-faced Josh Peck, bully
George comes across as one of those terribly spoiled, lonely kids who
spend most of their waking days lost in the reality of their own minds.
His bullying behavior -- pummeling Rory Culkin’s outwardly pacifistic
Sam, which sets the payback plan in motion -- seems contrived, as do a
few particularly nasty verbal attacks that verge on overkill; they’re
here more to justify George’s overboard plunge than to add character
shading. It’s as if Estes couldn’t kill George off without ensuring that
the boy had some culpability in his own demise. Such over-planning on
Estes’ part is excusable to a point, as he successfully imbues Mean
Creek with a piercing emotional intensity regarding the often
conflicted, awkward world of youth.
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February 24, 2005
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan, 2003 (2004 U.S. Release)
Rating: 4.0
A cavernous Taipei movie house will close its doors forever after a
final late night screening of King Hu's 1966 martial arts film Dragon
Inn. Rain drives a Japanese man into the theater. A hobbled woman
working the box office wanders the vast halls seeking the projectionist,
the only other employee in the place. Two men watch the movie,
acknowledging the other's presence as their younger selves battle
onscreen -- celluloid ghosts from a forgotten era. Tsai Ming-Liang's
Goodbye, Dragon Inn continues the director's fascination with
isolation in public spaces. And what better environment to examine
modern culture and people's disconnection from one another than a movie
palace? It’s here, after all, that individuals come together but aren't
expected to interact with one another, comforted in the dark, basking in
the warmth of human contact but not compelled to express themselves.
Plotless, poetic and respectful of the power of still silences -- yet
imbued with humorous touches (a group of men standing at urinals,
awkwardly avoiding conversation and eye contact) -- Goodbye, Dragon
Inn masterfully explores nostalgia, loneliness and longing with
minimal, beautifully layered brushstrokes. It’s the antithesis of the
hyperactive action movie, with little concern for the impatient viewer.
Those seeking a more meditative experience will be hard pressed to find
a better cinematic evocation of "more with less" filmmaking than this
minor-key jewel.
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February 22, 2005
Last Life in the Universe
Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand / Japan, 2003 (2004 U.S. Release)
Rating: 3.6
Fundamentally, Last Life in the Universe is about a man moving from a
state of clinical stillness to a condition of harmonious disorder. It's also a
gangster film more interested in innocent bystanders than hoods or the police
who chase them. Tadanobu Asano plays Kenji, a meticulous, exceedingly
introverted Japanese librarian living in Bangkok, who fantasizes about various
ways of ending his life. Whenever Kenji attempts to follow through on these
desires, however, he's repeatedly interrupted. The most egregious intrusion is
by Kenji's brother (Yutaka Matsushige), an obnoxious Yakuza thug who's fled
Japan for unexplained reasons and has apparently had improper relations with
Kenji's daughter (whom we never see or learn anything about). After Kenji's
brother is murdered in his apartment and Kenji kills the assailant, our
remarkably calm protagonist leaves his now-defiled home and takes refuge with
Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak), a young Thai woman who's recently lost her sister in a
car accident (which Kenji coincidentally happened to witness). Where Kenji is soft-spoken
and orderly, Noi is aggressive and chaotic. Clearly, opposites attract but,
fortunately, the film doesn't follow typical romantic movie conventions. Last
Life is more concerned with how people make fresh starts in the wake of
personal tragedies than with ensuring its mismatched couple finds everlasting
happiness. The film's main drawback is the too-enigmatic Kenji: Clearly, he left
Japan for a reason, and, based on the elaborate tattoo on his back and skillful
fighting ability, he most likely was a gangster like his brother. But we never
learn any of this, and that severely limits our ability to connect to or
empathize with him. Pen-ek Ratanaruang obviously prefers an illogical,
magic-realist narrative to a conventional one, and in this respect he's aided
enormously by Christopher Doyle's beautiful, painterly photography. But there's
a point at which being too opaque can prevent a film from achieving a richer,
sublime truth. Last Life is tongue-tied by its own pretensions regarding
the subjectivity of reality.
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February 12, 2005
Bad Education
Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2004
Rating: 3.1
Who else but Pedro Almodóvar could mix trans-gender junkies, film noir, furtive
hand jobs at the movies and a scathing indictment of the Catholic Church -- and
still come out with a semi-coherent film? Almodóvar's Bad Education is
unique in its combination of elements, and the Spanish auteur deserves credit
for holding the entire mess together. Unfortunately, it's lacking in the one
aspect evident throughout the director's career: passion. (We do see passion
once, at the very end: The word surges toward us just before the credits roll.)
Director Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is stumped for a new project at the dawn
of the 1980s. On cue, mysterious Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael García Bernal) enters
Enrique's office with a story he's written. The catch: The tale recounts the
time Enrique and Ignacio attended the same Catholic school together in the early
'60s, where they had a brief fling before Enrique was expelled by Ignacio's
jealous, pederast teacher. Ignacio's tacked on a fictional payback ending, in
which he blackmails the priest years later, to finance a sex-change operation.
Enrique agrees to turn the story into a film, and rekindles his romance with the
beguiling Ignacio. But all is not as it seems (is it ever?). While the
subsequent revelations add up (and a tad too tidily, at that), Bad Education
suffers from a lack of wit and spirit. Clearly Almodóvar's touching on some
painfully autobiographical issues here, and perhaps being so close to the
material prevents him from infusing things with the fire so prevalent in his
past work. Bad Education wants us to feel the sting of betrayal and the
confusion that comes with feeling trapped by one's birth gender. In that
respect, it succeeds, even if we never gain any real insight into Bernal's
"femme fatale" Ignacio or the even more opaque Enrique.
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February 07, 2005
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
Joel Schumacher, USA, 2004
Rating: 3.0
The famous silent version of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera,
starring Lon Chaney in truly ghastly death's-head makeup, ran a lean 79 minutes.
Nothing was wasted in its tale of the mysterious figure haunting the Paris Opera
House, who teaches young ingénue Christine to become a great singer. Joel
Schumacher's big-screen adaptation of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's enormously
successful theatrical musical adds nearly an hour to this running time. And since
most of that span is filled with characters singing their inner thoughts and
feelings, the question of whether this garishly ornate, blood-red gothic
romantic spin on the familiar story works really comes down to how in tune
patrons are with the score. Those who enjoy music painted in broad strokes, with
nothing remotely ambiguous left to chance, will probably be in heaven; those
hoping for a tad more subtlety and less "Jesus Christ Superstar" bombast had
better stick to the silent version. Schumacher does what he can, freeing the
musical from the artificial environs of the stage and imbuing it with lively
camera movement and evocative lighting. And the actors (especially the vocally
gifted Emmy Rossum as love interest Christine) accord themselves nicely. The
main problem with the singing Phantom, then, stems from making the
Phantom less a tragic, horribly disfigured outsider (basically, the Hunchback of
Notre Dame composing music instead of ringing cathedral bells) than a tall,
enigmatic anti-hero who wears stylish, custom-fit half-masks to cover what is
essentially a really gnarly birthmark. Chaney forced Christine to decide whether
she could bear his horrific visage and still love the man inside; the updated
Christine basically has to choose between two hunks, and (Spoiler alert!)
goes with the more emotionally stable of the two: the bland nobleman Raoul
(Patrick Wilson). For pure grandiose spectacle, Webber's Phantom wins,
even if it runs too long and is bereft of any suspense.
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January 26, 2005
Infernal Affairs
Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2002 (2004 U.S. Release)
Rating: 3.6
Infernal Affairs is a Hong Kong crime drama that doesn't rely on
gravity-defying, guns-akimbo shots or the expressive imagery of hot
shell casings bouncing off the floor. Rather, we get a meditative study
of two men existing in opposite worlds: Ming (Andy Lau) is sent to the
police academy by criminal underworld boss Sam (Eric Tsang) in an effort
to infiltrate the department and stay one step ahead of the
investigators. While at the academy, Ming watches as Yan (Tony Leung
Chiu-Wai) is expelled for "breaking the rules." Actually, Yan is kicked
out so he can be sent undercover to infiltrate the triad crime world.
Fast-forward ten years, and the two moles, Ming and Yan, are now
attempting to expose one another in a deadly cat-and-mouse game.
Infernal Affairs features sleek, confident cinematography and an
appropriately pulse-driven, urbanized score. But it's in the exploration
of the conflicted psychologies of Ming and Yan (how long before a
criminal pretending to be a cop becomes what he's pretending to be? and
vice-versa) that elevates the film above standard crime/action fare.
Granted, the basic setup isn't exactly fresh, but it's the execution,
from the believable performances by the two leads to a few surprising
plot twists, that contributes to the film's effectiveness. Some hokey
use of flashbacks and supporting players that aren't sufficiently
developed are minor slights. Infernal Affairs (slated for an
Americanized remake by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt
Damon as the possible leads) is an excellent example of cool restraint
from a genre better known for its gratuitous overkill.
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January 23, 2005
Assault on Precinct 13
Jean-François Richet, USA, 2005
Rating: 2.3
This tepid remake of John Carpenter's vastly superior 1976 B-movie about a
police station under siege bends over backwards to violate every rule of the
action drama. Instead of building tension throughout to a pulse-quickening
conclusion, Assault 2005 takes habitual breaks to gives its characters
every possible chance to emote. Rather than quickly sketching character types
and then letting them dive headlong into the fray, it overloads the back story
and inserts crosses and double-crosses that are obvious from the outset. Ethan
Hawke's Jake Roenick, the clichéd cop-with-a-tortured-past, spends far too much
time rediscovering his manhood before kicking some corrupt cop ass. Laurence
Fishburne's superthug Marion Bishop (the reason a group of cops is assaulting
the isolated, cut-off Detroit precinct) still hasn't entirely shaken the
Zen-cool Morpheus affectation he employed in
the Matrix movies, offering a one-note performance far too assured of its
character's long-term survival. The rest of the players (including a wasted
Maria Bello) are mostly fodder for Gabriel Byrne's rogue-cop hit squad.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: John Carpenter knows how to create suspense;
French newcomer Jean-François Richet does not. The updated Assault makes
the false presumption that audiences will have a vested interest in these
people; Carpenter already knew that answer going in and made sure personality
never got in the way of the action.
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January 19, 2005
Talaye Sorkh (Crimson Gold)
Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2003 (2004 U.S. release)
Rating: 3.5
Working from a screenplay by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar
Panahi's Talaye Sorkh (Crimson Gold) examines modern Tehran and its
social structure as viewed from the lower rungs. Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin) is
a pizza deliveryman acutely aware of the seemingly unbridgeable gulf separating
rich from poor. After a jewelry merchant insults Hussein and his friend Ali (Kamyar
Sheisi) by refusing to let them into his store, the opening scene of Hussein's
botched robbery and shooting of the man is (partially) explained. Cleary,
Crimson Gold isn't too concerned with building suspense or offering a
typical, plot-driven narrative. This is a character study of a city and its
people, from the invasive police who punish young people from mingling with
members of the opposite sex, to the spoiled rich who haven't a clue just how
good they have it. A too-easy corollary is Taxi Driver and its window
into the dark recesses of mid-'70s disaffection. But Hussein is no plus-sized,
mute variation on the self-inflated, fatalistic machismo of Travis Bickle. He's
a simple man desiring something better in life, realizing too late that it will
forever be beyond his grasp. Crimson Gold putters rather than lurches,
more meditative than proactive. Call it an impotent indictment of societal
conditions that destroy individuals like Hussein, born into a world with a very
low ceiling for advancement and little room for expressing a rage that simmers
but never quite rises to a boil.
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January 13, 2005
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Mike Hodges, USA / UK, 2003
Rating: 3.1
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead retreads the same basic plot of Mike Hodges'
1971 debut feature Get Carter: A man avenging his brother's death. In the
update, Clive Owen plays Will Graham, an ex-gangster who has retreated to the
forest to find peace. Then his younger brother is found dead in a bathtub filled
with blood, a presumed suicide. Of course, there's more to it than that, and --
since Hodges shows us with brutal clarity what happened to the young man --
solving the mystery is left to Graham and his old 'hood mates. Crime genre
clichés abound, from the woman our lead left behind to the current top mobster
curious as to why the once formidable Graham has returned to his old stomping
grounds. Is it just to attend his brother's funeral or something more
business-oriented? But Hodges has more contemplative matters on his mind than
whether Graham settles the score regarding his brother's death or meets his own
demise from interested rivals. Clive Owen's Will broods... a lot. He's clearly a
man who knows violence and wants no part of it. The rub: You can run but you
can't hide from what you are -- and Will Graham is a stone-cold killer. The rest
of the film is window dressing, and never fully developed to any satisfying
degree. In the end, we have a man trying to reconcile his brother resting in
peace with finding a little parcel of contentment for himself, which makes for a
mild rather than wholehearted recommendation.
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