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Unbreakable (2000)
Super Hero in A Rain Poncho
Having a style can be something of a mixed blessing. It can trap you so that if you try anything new your audience will reject you. or it can liberate you from the concerns of attracting a new audience and concentrate on making the movies that you are best at making. Many directors use lighting, dialogue and actors so repeatedly that their films become inseparable from each other. Woody Allen comes easily to mind. The audience comes to recognise these qualities and often go to a movie looking for that that they know will be there.On the other hand, some audiences like innovation. They like things to be new, beyond formula and exciting. Truth is some of us go to see films by certain directors or with favourite actors simply because we want to see them in their natural habitat and we feel comfortable.
For a new director developing a style can pose a tricky proposition. Several new filmmakers of the last 10 years have chosen disparate paths - Quentin Tarantino so redefined the gangster genre that his films are instantly recognisable. His impact has been so rich that even bad versions of his film style still feel exactly like his films. Steven Speilberg has chosen a more electric path - with his choice of picture ranging the full gamut of genres thereby avoiding any sense of definitive style.
Last year M. Night Shyamalan debuted on the big screen with `The Sixth Sense' A small movie that due to a blindingly quick revelation of a plot twist became a massive $200 million hit. It propelled the unknown director into the highest heights of Hollywood, garnered an Academy Award nomination for its child-star (Haley Joel Osment) and reconfirmed Bruce Willis as the box-office-breaking star that he is.
Shyamalan latest film `Unbreakable' reunites the director and his very bankable star and this time adds Samuel L. Jackson - a man Willis has co starred with several times before.
Immediately there are elements of the sophomoric film that remind the viewer of that massive hit - the slow pacing, the green/gray lighting, and the subtle soft-spoken lead. Willis character - a security guard named David Dunne with a young son and a crumbling marriage - is so like his `Sixth Sense' character that for a while it feels like he has actually been reincarnated again and transported to this film. For a while these obvious similarities get in the way of enjoying this film.
Through a series of moody flashbacks we learn that Willis' Dunne is a former college football star who faked a career ending injury for the love of a woman. When we first meet Willis he is on a train back from New York to his hometown of Philadelphia. (Philadelphia was also the setting for Sixth Sense). The camera playfully slips back and forth from behind a seat as he flirts with a tattooed your sports agent who sits beside him. Minutes afte r overstepping the line with the married young woman the train they are on derails. Willis miraculously is the sole survivor of the devastating train wreck.
When your first movie costs less than $20 million and grosses 10 times that its pretty much a given in Hollywood that you can do whatever you like for a next project. M. Night Shyamalan chose not to let it go too much to his head as this subtle smart - and though morbidly paced - stylish film shows. Though only his second film, already clear patterns are developing. Shyamalan wrote produced and directed this effort and his mark is well on its way to becoming defined.
Samuel Jackson plays Elijah a man who suffers from a rare bone disease that makes his bones shatter on little impact. As a child Elijah was called Mr. Glass because his limbs were so feeble.
At their initial confrontation it seems as though he is the prophet his biblical name suggests. Elijah carried a cane and though dressed like a post-modern pimp the purple lining of his cloak is more reminiscent of the vespers of a priest.
Willis' character represents the opposite of who he is. He survives a train wreck without as much as a scratch - hence the `unbreakable' of the title. Elijah persists on meeting calling and prompting Willis into thinking because of his resistance to breaking he must be some kind of latter day folk hero. Elijah is a collector and believer in comic books. Try as Willis and his family may Willis eventually comes to believe in Elijah's revelations.
This leads to a climactic scene amidst impossibly heavy rain where Willis confronts a deranged killer. In his fight with the orange clothed villain Willis is thrown from a balcony into a tarpaulin covered pool. Slowly he begins to sink into the water, which we previously learned is this hero's Achilles heel. As he emerges from the water that nearly kills him Shyamalan shows off his true subtly as a director. Willis, cloaked in a navy blue hooded rain poncho, rises with the camera and stands stock still for a moment before going on. It's the perfect coming together of this new talents vision. Rain, dank lighting and Bruce Willis. Its so indelible that's its hard to imagine any other actor playing the lead in this directors next film.
Of course we've seen this all before - new hot shot directors who burst onto the scene with a great movie, a decent second movie even sometimes, only to eventually loose their way. Think John Singleton. Though Shyamalan certainly is onto something here, for style to really be lasting it must breach genres. It's early days yet but 5 years from now it will be interesting to see what Shyamalan is up to.
The element of this film that most defines this director's style and most clearly harks back to `Sixth Sense' is the end. After almost two hours of methodically dragging us in one direction, Shyamalan deftly, quickly and profoundly pulls all his little tricks flashily together with all the softness of a sledgehammer. Stay closely by because if you blink you'll miss the whole thing.
The Straight Story (1999)
Best performance by an inanimate object
Bundles of sticks have had a good year in film. They made their debut as a scary harbinger of doom-to-come in the highly over-rated low-budget hit of all time, "The Blair Witch Project" earlier this summer.
They play a just-as-ominous but much more subtle role in "The Straight Story," David Lynch's wonderful G- rated film based on a true-life story of 73 year old Alvin Straight who drove his riding mower across two states to visit his ailing brother.
The Bundle of Sticks revives its role from the over-hyped "Blair Witch Project" in much the same way it appeared in that film, showing up one morning outside the protagonists' tent. Here though it is a symbol of strength and one that returns a wayward girl to her family instead of taking her further away.
"The Straight Story" is just that - quite the departure from the American master of the surreal.
Shot with all the care and attention to detail we expect from Lynch, it is not without his trademark quirks. One sequence involving Alvin buying supplies for his journey features a Lynch favorite - the un-scripted buzzing fly that wanders into shot. Lynch - unlike most directors - instead of cutting the shot - leaves the fly in and even generously amps up the buzz just cause he can.
But while his quirkiness defines his other films the "Straight Story" needs none of that heavy handedness. With the help of a few odd ball characters - watch for the double-pricing Olsen twins and the method acting of the Bundle of Sticks - Lynch has created a film that deserves at least four Oscar nominations come February. (Unless of course they develop a new category for Best Performance by an Inanimate Object which The Bundle would easily snap up.)
As Alvin, played authentically by stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth, sets out on his near 6-week journey his story and the story of those he encounters unfolds with all the ease and pace of a road movie slowed to 5 miles per hour. The "bread basket of America" lends itself easily to picturesque setting suns, old timers milling about and combine harvesters gathering grain to create our daily bread.
Lynch utilizes this natural canvas to moving effect. Alvin has his story to tell and Lynch tells it not in a spoonfed expositional way, but through little parables he delivers to those he encounters along his journey up and down the hills of Iowa. In a credit to Lynch and his team of editors and writers not one word is misplaced, not one sequence too long. (Lynch and John Roach get the writing credits.)
There are moments of pure Lynch scattered throughout this heart-string-tugger that wouldn't be out of place in other Lynch visions; The long open highway and its screen dividing yellow line ("Lost Highway"). The sprinkler system that can't get itself to shoot higher than 6 inches while in the background a child chases his ball (the "Twin Peaks" TV series). And the plucky score by Angelo Badelamenti (everything good Lynch has ever directed.)
But the "Straight Story" does something that all the other "men at a crossroads" films of late eschew; men can change - even old men - not by virtue of violence but by going against everyone's advice and simply taking that inertia and making a move. Even if it is at 5 miles per hour.
The Sicilian (1987)
A pretentious campy Godfather!
You can't be serious. This movie could have been great. It's got tragedy and struggle at its heart. The score is mournful and sufficiently mody. The direction and photography are at times beautiful and inspired. But the hard-boiled and wooden acting - combined with some of the most ridiculous dialouge - takes all seriousness right out of this over-achieving film. The only true hope within this waste of money is the always brilliant, John Turtorro. Watching him act one gets the idea that he knows the dialogue is ridiculous and acts up the campiness accordingly. Look out for a scene late in the film when he visits the cardinal to retrieve a message for Guliano. AS he walks back, he stumbles over a coffee table, in effect pulling the wind right out of the drama!