fred-287 Reviews

Bundy Reborn (2012)

Hey cool---Sid Haig plays a good guy!

[21 November 2015]

This has happened so seldom in his 55-year career that when he is presented in "The Inflicted" as a kindly avuncular psychiatrist, I was worried that the star/writer/director Matthan Harris was going to "pull a fast one" and have Haig's character turn out to be some Hannibal Lecter-type whack job, but I guess Mr. Harris figured one psycho character (plus a copycat) was enough. Haig is so warm and likable in this role that it once again seems a shame that career movie villains hardly ever get a chance at an Oscar nomination; Haig is that good, and I hope he plans to keep working until he's no longer with us. Also good is Haig's fellow Rob Zombie alumnus Bill Moseley in a more complicated role as an apparently well-meaning father who just can't regard himself as an evildoer. But other than these fine performances by these seasoned veteran performers, there's really not much to recommend "The Inflicted," a hodgepodge of so many other horror flicks I couldn't keep track of them all. As an actor I couldn't be sure if Mr. Harris is good at playing creepy or is just naturally creepy himself. He seems to be competing for the Dennis Hopper Most F-Words Award, forgetting that one needs Hopper's surreal charm to make that surrealistically charming. The plot is ridiculous, set in that alternate cinematic universe where criminals can go around doing anything they want as though they were invisible, and the police only ever appear in situations where they can be easily killed, without their colleagues knowing their location etc. One cop is played by an actor with a thick Italian accent with no explanation at all of how he wound up in Texas, which is the most amusing thing in the movie (probably unintentionally so). Near the end is a sequence in a mental hospital that reminded me of when I worked in one, with the drab institutional drug-enforced ennui hanging over everyone like a cloud. But even this is ruined when the killer appears standing atop the wall with a sniper rifle, again unnoticed by anyone. Please don't pay any money to rent this, but if it happens to appear on your cable on-demand service, I can recommend the parts with Haig and Moseley, feel free to fast forward past the rest of it.

Klyuch salamandry (2011)

Tovarish kicks butt!

[2 June 2015]

Nominally about yet another horrible disease threatening to eradicate humanity, the treat here is watching a squad of Russian soldiers battling hordes of sinister Asians. Led by mixed martial artist Fedor Emelianenko who has a nice Jason Stathamesque quality, these guys wreak havoc with every available weapon, including bare hands if need be. Nice to see Russians finally depicted as "the good guys" in an action flick; I'd still like to see their version of a "Platoon"-type saga about Afghanistan, reminding us Yanks how much we failed to learn from their experience, just as we'd failed to learn from the French in Vietnam. (Now if we could just find a new set of movie criminals to replace the "Russian Mafia" who are depicted as almost cartoonishly vast and powerful.) The directors do a nice job of letting us see enough of (but not too much of) the soldiers' "human side"; when Fedor, about to take on an overwhelming enemy force, intones "God save my sinful soul," it's affecting without being corny. The "name" players, Rutger Hauer and Michael Madsen, have what amount to cameo roles, the former as an evil drug company overlord (is there any other kind?) and the latter as a mercenary who works for him leading the above mentioned Asian hordes. Depressing seeing how old Hauer's become; Madsen can still be effective with his squinting underplayed menace and has a great scene terrorizing a female Russian hostage with her hands tied behind her back--is there any other kind? Also on hand is a Korean guy (I confess I forget his connection to the plot, but he seems to be a "good guy" also) who at the end gets to be a kind of one-man Wild Bunch fighting past a phalanx of goons to get to Hauer. So I'll definitely "take the 5th"; maybe it doesn't add up to that much in the grand cinematic scheme of things, but I found it well worth my time and it made me glad I have the "Streampix" function with my cable....

Was du nicht siehst (2009)

Warning to animal lovers

[21 April 2015]

The only character I actually liked in this movie is a dog, who meets an unfortunate demise which is mostly off camera and, I guess, "relevant to the plot," but it does sour my memory of this brooding Teutonic mood piece. A sallow little punk named Anton has apparently largely withdrawn from the world since he found his suicidal father's body in the tub a while back---or that's what he says happened; one of the messages in "What You Don't See" seems to be "If you don't see it, don't take it for granted--or even if you do see it." His mother and her current squeeze have dragged Anton off to the remote northwestern French coast for a vacation, where our lonely lad meets a neighboring duo of similar age who may or may not be brother and sister, and whose own father may or may not be dead, and who may or may not even exist themselves. (Whenever there's a character who's only ever seen by one other character. a warning bell should go off...) Over the week of the vacation (although it seems to last longer) Anton participates in various youthful hijinks with the uninhibited pair and becomes less inhibited himself, becoming downright uppity with his mother and prospective stepfather. Eventually some bad things happen (which the local cops basically blow off, since that's their function as movie hick cops) and Anton and now just his mother head back home, where presumably he'll eventually become the next famous-for-fifteen minutes German mass murderer, like that pilot who flew the plane into the French Alps. What "What..." chiefly has going for it is director Wolfgang Fischer's ability to make the French coastal area look like a foreign planet, which (along with some nice atmospheric choral music) lets one follow along with the dreamlike ambiance. But in hindsight all I can really focus on is the dying dog. Herr Fischer, in the future please restrict yourself to hominid victims. A note on the English subtitles: When a character occasionally tells another to "Hau ab," which in the German vernacular means "Beat it" or "Get lost," the subtitle renders it as "Piss off," a largely British expression. The other subtitles don't seem particularly directed at a British audience, so it's a little puzzling. The Germans have a lot of words relating to bodily functions such as urination---not surprising, given that they're toilet trained virtually at birth--but "abhauen" isn't one of them....

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)

A kind of Anti-Matthew 5:27-28?

[19 February 2015]

That of course is where Jesus supposedly said "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That is to say, thinking about doing a thing is as bad as doing it. That precept never made much sense to yours truly, and apparently it didn't to Luis Bunuel either, because the whole point of this movie seems to be to refute that notion. The title character fantasizes about killing various women he comes across, but circumstances always seem to conspire to prevent it. At the end when he demands to be arrested, an authority figure replies, in effect, "For what? You didn't do anything." The best part of the film is the opening sequence apparently taking place around the end of the Mexican revolution period c. 1920, with Archibaldo as an insufferably spoiled only child giving grief to his long-suffering but stoic nanny. Filmed in Bunuel's trademark style with long takes and barely perceptible camera movements, this battle of wills is fascinating until the arrival of the lad's rich idiot mother (rich idiots being one of Bunuel's favorite lifelong targets). Meanwhile the nanny watches through the window as a gun battle unfolds in the street below; she catches a stray bullet, and young Archibaldo finds himself fascinated with her corpse. Cut forward to the adult Archibaldo, now a rich idiot in his own right plus an obsession with being a serial killer. This main part of the film was less interesting for me, mostly because Bunuel allows the adult actor to perform almost like a cartoon, with bulging eyes and goofy leer, like a mentally retarded Snidely Whiplash. The supporting cast are competent performers but in my memory I have trouble telling some of them apart. There are some nice fantasy sequences, such as Archibaldo ordering his bride to undergo an elaborate Catholic ritual before shooting her. Probably the best known sequence, Archibaldo cremating a mannequin, left me more or less unmoved, although it probably seemed more sensational in 1955. Part of the problem here is that, as in the later "American Psycho," how compelling is it if all the bad stuff takes place inside the guy's head? Also there's a lack of that great sexual tension that Bunuel was able to generate in some of his other Mexican work, such as "Susana" or "El Bruto." But certainly it's a must see at least for Bunuel fans; like Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" from the same year, this is the closest this director comes to true whimsy (especially the parts with the American tourists) in a career of mostly much darker shades.

Lucy (I) (2014)

OK, so now what does Luc Besson do for an encore?

[31 July 2014]

From "La Femme Nikita" onwards I've been a big fan of his, in fact he's the only foreign director I can think of whose name alone would pull me into a movie theater. I've been trying to put my finger on just what it is that makes his stuff so capital-W watchable; maybe it's his ability to combine an innately playful (even zany) quality with gut-wrenchingly brutal violence and cruelty into a seamless whole; add to that an aura of inevitability that maybe one just has to be European to be able to render, the moments of joy in the face of impending doom. Being French in particular, he can't help but ponder deep philosophical issues amidst the gun battles and car chases, and with Lucy he's decided to "shoot the moon," try to capture the entire essence of human nature and potential. As they supposedly like to say in New Orleans, "Let the good times roll...." Your reaction to this movie will depend entirely on how well you think Scarlett Johansson carries off the title role. I have to 'fess up that before this I of course had heard of her but had never actually seen her in something. As per the late Siskel and Ebert, thumbs up for me. She plays the significant other of a shady sort called Richard (who wears a straw cowboy hat for no clear reason) who lives in Taiwan and works for a mysterious kingpin called Mr. Jang. He insists she carry a briefcase into a hotel lobby for him but won't tell her what's in it, and when she shrewdly resists, he literally handcuffs her to it. Her latent terror combined with desperate hope that all will turn out well is exquisitely manifested by Ms Johansson. It turns out that she and a few hapless others have been designated by Mr. Jang to be human mules for some super-synthetic drug which she accidentally ingests into her system. This gives her a "brain boost" (to borrow a term from "Forbidden Planet") resulting in steadily increasing superhuman abilities. Much wackiness ensues as the action shifts to France involving gangsters and cops and also the apparently immortal Morgan Freeman as a professor whose function is to render arcane scientific concepts digestible for most of us movie viewers. There's a lot here that can fairly be described as derivative; one nay saying critic referred to half a dozen titles he saw as influences for "Lucy" (I'm surprised he missed "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Certain plot holes can seem like black holes, such as the sequence where she seems to be disintegrating inside an airplane restroom---which by the way must be one of the most gorgeously ominous things I've seen on screen---next thing we know, she's bodily intact again. But these quibbles, while valid, seem to be missing the point, which is to let oneself get swept along for this ultra-Bessonian ride with Ms Johansson the ever calmer rock upon which we can position ourselves. This may sound corny, but by the time Lucy finally surpasses the need for corporeality but informs us via someone's cell phone that she is "everywhere," I personally found that reassuring. Kudos also to the other actors, in particular Min-sik Choi as Mr. Jang; he is quite possibly the best actor on the planet---okay, a bold statement, but catch him in "Oldboy" and his other Korean flicks--in fact, "Oldboy" alone should do it for you. (I didn't even dream of contaminating my memory of "Oldboy" by watching the American remake.) Also very nice use by Besson of various pieces of stock footage, it all fits right in. Great evocative music too, I may even buy the soundtrack CD. So bottom line, don't worry if this movie is "cool" or not (seems to be doing okay at the box office). It'll be dark in the theater, no one has to see you enjoying yourself....

Angst, Piss & Shit (2013)

Somehow I doubt this is the film face Norway really wanted to show the world....

[7 June 2014]

Okay, granted, my knowledge of Norway and movies pretty much begins and end with Sonja Henie, but this short could be seen as an addition to the international ultra-black-humor canon as exemplified by, say, Belgium's "Man Bites Dog" about which I had some bleak things to say in 2005; my review was titled "Does Belgium actually need to exist?" One could ask the same thing about Norway after seeing "Angst...." Okay, a gloomy man and an even gloomier woman live in a complete crap-hole; she never seems to leave, he only seems to leave to go murder people with a meat cleaver. (He doesn't seem to have a job, buy maybe Norway has a generous welfare state like it's neighbor Sweden.) Apparently they used to kill together, but now only he does. (All cinematic serial killers seem to live in this alternate universe where they're always conveniently alone with their victims and no one ever sees them and they never leave any evidence behind.) In one of the few uses of dialog in the short, he asks her if she would like to go out with him again, is met with stony silence and if I recall right, never talks to her again. Eventually he gets tired of her (exactly why is unclear), files for "serial killer divorce" i.e. chops her up, spruces himself and the place up somewhat, lights some candles and has her for dinner. The end. Obviously if these people weren't killers there'd be nothing of interest whatsoever about them, but I think this whole "banality of evil" shtick is really really old by now, and in fact was nine years ago when I reviewed "Man Bites Dog" (at least here there's no "movie within a movie" gimmick). So let's start an on-line petition, folks: from now on movie killers have to be held to the same standards of being compellingly watchable as characters are who just "ordinary people." Who's with me? ---Okay, never mind. As for whether "Angst..." is worth 20 minutes of your life: with enough beer and maybe some classic Rob Zombie music playing---if you don't have any classic Rob Zombie music at home, why not?---sure, maybe, but now that the Fear.com channel seems to have yanked it, I have no idea where it would be seen....By the way, since the man is seen smoking countless cigarettes, maybe it would have been fun if the auteur had added a flash-forward of him dying of lung cancer in some gloomy hospital---at government expense, of course...

Papá Wrestling (2009)

Makes Robert Rodriguez look like the Disney channel....

[3 November 2013]

In the midst of the current concern about kids bullying other kids (highlighted by the 12-year-old in Florida who committed suicide after being "cyber"-bullied) we have this Portuguese short inviting us not only not to take it too seriously but to channel it into the ultimate cranked up revenge fantasy. In this case a dorky kid has his lunch stolen by punks who stuff him into a toilet to boot; he goes home to complain to his dad, who's pumping iron wearing a full pro wrestling costume including "luchador" mask. Papa emits an outraged growl---this is the only sound he makes in the short, he has no lines as such---and off he goes to retrieve his son's lunch box, and then some, and then some more. Now, we're used to cartoonishly stylized violence in the movies, most recently and notably from Mr. Rodriguez in "Machete" and "Machete Kills," but here it's stripped down to the bare bones (and blood, and internal organs) and shoved at us with warp speed and gleeful mania; we barely have time to react to the demise of one punk before the next one is underway. Remember the inventive use of intestines that Mr. Rodriguez employed in the above two flicks? Well, here Fernando Alle outdoes that---I won't say how, you really should see for yourself. When Papa is done with the carnage---undisturbed by the arrival of policemen or some such---he returns home with the lunch box (adorned with a pair of eyeballs) and goes right back to pumping iron. A nice little anarchic blast, unmarred by some lame ending like turning out to be the nerd's imagination or having cops show up at the wrestler's house. Of course the topic of bullying still waits to be grappled with afterwards. One of the many reasons I'm glad I never had kids: I would have had no clue what to do or say if one of mine had turned out to be either a bully or a victim of same. "Well, remember, life's a bitch, then you die..."

You're Next (2011)

A kind of anti-"Funny Games"?

[9/10 · 25 August 2013]

Okay, truth be told, I haven't seen either the original German "Funny Games" or the American remake (I did catch a clip of the latter on You Tube, with the volume turned down) but the original did precede (and inspire?) American horror flicks from the mid-2000's like "Saw," "Hostel" and "The Devil's Rejects" (and more after those, like "The Strangers") with two basic common features: (A) the "good guys" are doomed from the outset, and (B) the "bad guys" get away with it. Now to some extent we'd been used to movies where most of the victims died except for maybe one (usually the cute heroine, who might wind up nuts or something, as per the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"). What seemed new in the 2000s, though, was the idea of the good guys having NO CHANCE and the bad guys like some primeval force blowing through an area, annihilating everything in their path and moving on without a second thought (or their victims coming to them and getting annihilated). To me this was the "porn" part of "torture porn," not so much the violence itself but the notion that it's MEANINGLESS, that the people die because they're there, like bugs getting swatted, with no "message" beyond "You don't like it? Why you watching it?" Well, I don't know---why do we watch anything that's presented to us? For me, I want to see what perspective the writer/director brings to it; if I just want to revel in bad things happening, there's always You Tube. And oh, by the way, I do love good conflict, I do love a good chase or other Perils-of-Pauline-type predicament, and some gore or mayhem along the way spices up the gumbo, of course...But virtual "snuff films"? No thanks, y'all....

So here we have Adam Wingard, whose previous stuff I haven't seen (still haven't broken down and bought a DVD player) but have read about; "He brings back that gut-churning uncertainty from the 1970's," someone gushed about "Home Sick." If you've seen the trailer for "You're Next," you know the set-up. As the attack by the bad guys interrupts the suburban family's dinner, my first thought was "Wonder how they'll explain that nobody can call the cops with a cell phone..." Then a character suggests the bad guys have a "cell phone blocker"---okay, whatever. (The person who says this turns out to be significant.) Soon the "anti-Funny Games" element emerges in the character of Erin, who we learn grew up in an Australian survivalist colony--okay, whatever. The point is, SHE can kick bad-guy ass and SHE is the chief reason to watch this thing. (Yeah, she gets bloodied herself. She's not Steven Seagall after all.) Mr Wingard has rescued the horror genre: once again, it's a contest, not just a slow execution, and that I like. Oh, and Michael Haneke, the Calvinistic director of "Funny Games"? Up your prim and pure butt, Euro-dude...I haven't even mentioned a really cool plot twist that I WILL NOT give away; others may claim they saw it coming, but now I may go see "You're Next" again to see how it all fits in. Very capable performances by the unknown (to me) cast, and as for that Australian chick--I think I'm in love. A few quibbles, like some scenes where the bad guys set something up that seems to rely on their having read the script, and did we really need to hear that early song over and over again? THAT's the "torture" part....The ending reminds one of a classic horror flick from the late 1960's that I also don't want to name---I'm sorry if I "spoiled" ANYthing, just go out and make some money for Mr Wingard so he can keep single-handedly saving the genre. I'd heartily recommend he keep Erin as a recurring character, or at least keep using that actress in other roles...

Lille Lise (2005)

Nothing you haven't seen before...

[29 June 2013]

This Danish short from 2005 starts out hugely promisingly, with a little girl standing outside clutching a doll with her head cocked to the side staring intently at something, then we see what: a man (presumably her father) carrying the body of a woman (presumably her mother) to their car and loading the body into the trunk, then he announces to the girl that they're going on a trip. If the writer/director had had the fortitude to stick rigidly to the little-girl's-eye view of this unfolding tragedy, it could have been both horrifying and fascinating as we would be forced to watch what sadly is an all too mundane situation through these young innocent eyes. (Years ago when "Dick Tracy" was still a newspaper comic strip, Tracy is once told that maybe a certain murder case isn't "important enough" for his unit. Tracy grimly replies "Murder is always important." Is it? Is it really? Presumably it should be...) Unfortunately "Little Lise" then devolves into yet another dumb-ass little supernatural romp. No cliché is missed, including the girl's eyeballs filling up with blood (to show she's being possessed by an evil spirit, get it?) and having a car start itself ---because the evil spirit is driving, get it? As the car drives itself off through the woods, we don't know what will happen to the girl and---here's the real "thumbs down"---we don't really care. Some good subtle performances by the actors playing the parents, especially in a flashback scene where each tries to wrest the girl's affection away from the other. But bottom line, if you see this listed as an entry on the FEARNet channel under Shorts, find something better to do with your twenty minutes.

Slither (2006)

"It came out of the sky....."

[1 April 2006]

That, in addition to being the title of (in my humble opinion) Creedence Clearwater Revival's best song (from "Willie & the Poor Boys"), could've been the title of "Slither," which is not a remake of the 1973 cynically comic crime caper with James Caan but rather a loving tribute to every 1950's drive-in B-movie about some kind of menace from outer space. It's not particularly scary (every jolt is telegraphed well in advance) nor especially gory by current standards, nor will the "ick" factor (as seen in the ads) knock your socks off. There are some laughs here and there but this not an "inside joke"-fest. It's a straight-up trip down memory lane circa 1956 but with more money for special effects and of course the "We demand an R rating" language. Tony Soprano's favorite epithet (rhymes with "stock trucker") sounds odd in the mouth of apple-pie Gregg Henry but it fuels my second-favorite scene in "Slither" with Henry in his car barking the term at a guy parked in front of him immediately before a woman with a little girl calls out "Good morning, Mr. Mayor," a moment right out of John Waters at his most subversive.

A big rock hurtles towards our planet and true to the genre lands not in Carl Sagan's back yard but rather in backwoods South Carolina, played with great relish by Vancouver, Canada, the place that (as per "X-Files") apparently can pass for any location in America. Writer/director James Gunn (who nods to his Troma origins in one scene) establishes the mood with a 1950's –style billboard and then a montage of maybe the most hideous-looking people I've seen in a movie since Pasolini's "Salo"; I mean these people are "ordinary" with a (fierce) vengeance; I mean they couldn't appear on Jerry Springer----maybe on some future Fox freak show. Fortunately we then move on to the main cast members, who are played by professional actors which means we can at least stand to look at them, but I wondered if Gunn were trying to pull a "Rhinoceros" suggesting that hominids're the "true" beasts, or in this case aliens. Gunn pokes plenty of fun at redneck culture (what IS the big thrill about killing a deer, anyway?) without being too heavy-handed with it---after all it's basically "shooting fish in a barrel," no great artistic effort is needed---plus he wisely lends his local yokels just enough personality to keep us passingly interested in their fate, even throws in a lesbian cop for some variety (unfortunately that subplot hits a dead end, like most of the characters). I won't dwell on the plot points of the alien attack; you've seen everything here before somewhere or other; one image near the end is out of one of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequels (sorry I can't remember which one, they tend to blur in my memory); even the film's most striking visual grotesquerie (hint: "Something's wrong with me") conjured up a scene from "Blade." For much of the running time it's a zombie flick only (a la "28 Days Later….") the creatures aren't "really" dead, just infested with parasites somewhat resembling overgrown slugs, etc. In a way there's something comforting about all the familiarity ("Kill the one and they all die, right?"), like the old favored shirt one wears at home without ever wanting to toss it or give it away. I can envision "Slither" as something I'd look forward to on HBO some night (wouldn't be worth purchasing it) with much beer at hand, appreciating the sheer hilarious wretchedness of Air Supply's only hit (hey, I had to hear it endlessly when it was recorded, folks) especially in context of possible consummation of man (or monster) and wife.

Other than Henry (who should only be allowed to do comedy from now on) I only recognized Nathan Fillion from "Firefly"/"Serenity" (essentially playing Mal again) and Michael Rooker (who for me will always be Henry the Serial Killer) who with his bald head and wire-rimmed glasses somewhat resembles a young Dick Cheney, maybe intentionally so? Depending what one wants to read into it, "Slither" could be taken as a sly whack at the Bush gang with the blood-dripping creature intoning bromides about morality and each new disciple becoming just a channel for the creature. "I'll just keep getting bigger," the thing threatens at one point---rather like our burgeoning police state at home and imperialism abroad? Earlier I mentioned my second-favorite scene; the favorite is again with Gregg Henry who (when the lesbian cop exclaims "Praise Jesus" at some slight pause in the catastrophe) demands to know what connection with God she sees in any of this. Well, I've heard the Lord works in mysterious ways…..

Rob Zombie's voice is heard briefly on the phone as a doctor; he sounds, well, like a doctor, albeit with a somewhat sinister urge, let's say. One looks forward to hearing (and seeing) more of him in future screen projects. But here's what I'd like to see less of: dead dogs and cats (even after the closing credits there's a final shot). I know it's not real but it seems a cheap writing ploy; while from "Taxi Driver" onwards I've never expected cinema to be held responsible for the actions of those who watch it, still, to borrow a phrase from a recent Ebert piece, "there is a line." It's been reported that many serial killers started out as kids abusing animals. Isn't that a flame we want to snuff out early on rather than fan it even somewhat by serving it up in glorious 35 mm? But for us adults who know better (in the ostensible R-rated adult audience) "Slither" should induce a fond grin, make us want to dig out our old "Mad" magazines or even "EC Comics" if one goes back that far…. By the way: if you're a pregnant woman: did anyone warn you not to see the remake of "The Fly"? Well, don't see this either…….

V for Vendetta (2005)

This can't be about George Bush, the dictator's way too articulate.....

[23 March 2006]

"V for Vendetta" begins promisingly in a London apartment about twenty years hence with Natalie Portman apparently getting ready for a date (even though it's almost eleven pm) and barely paying attention to a guy on TV holding forth about "the former United States" having been doomed by sin and corruption, unlike England which apparently has morphed into fascism under the aegis of religion and anti-terrorism. Natalie goes out hoping to beat the "yellow curfew" (how many of us have zoomed to catch a yellow light in traffic?) but runs afoul of three "finger men" who seize the opportunity for a "bit o' fun." Right on cue appears a black-clad masked rescuer who after dispatching the finger men subjects poor ol' Natalie to the longest, most opaque speech I've heard in a movie in years (or maybe ever). The puzzled look on her face probably mirrored mine. After the stranger has exhausted every V-word in the English language (except maybe "vampire" and "vivisection") he invites her along to a mysterious rooftop "concert." If you accept that she takes him up on it, you'll probably take the rest of the film in stride; if not, you probably won't.

There's something about "V" that just seems a little "off"; hard to put one's finger on it. It's not the liberal borrowing of elements from other movies, including the later scenes in "Pink Floyd The Wall" for the visual aura; it's not the forced marriage of humor and cruelty; it's not the gaps in plot and character; we overlook those all the time if what's on screen is working for us. I think the problem is what George Bush Sr. called "the vision thing." Depictions of the future, especially a tyrannical future or otherwise gone awry, need to appear to have sprung forth fully formed like Athena from the mind of Zeus. "THX 1138," "Death Race 2000," "Bladerunner," "Brazil," "Ultraviolet" all have this in common: everything in them contributes to the desired effect and/or message. "V," though, is all over the map. Natalie's boss at the former BBC (now the "BNT") turns out to be a closet dissident who has a whole secret section of his house devoted to contraband like a copy of the Koran, because he knows he'd be in deep doo-doo just for having it; yet he produces a TV sketch lampooning the dictator and seems stunned when the government goons kick down his door. Well, which is it: are people living in fear of this regime, or not? Also part of my problem with "V" is Ms. Portman herself; she's game enough and her accent is credible, but there's something lacking in terms of screen presence; she reminds me of Gertrude Stein's famous comment about Oakland, California: "There's no THERE there." Her "Evey" never really registers as a flesh-and-blood person; her personality and even intelligence level shift according to the needs of the plot. She even disappears for a while and once she's back, one wonders what she's been doing, but all we learn is that she went to a store and didn't get recognized by a former co-worker, presumably due to her shaved head; I'll admit she's the cutest bald chick since Persis Khambatta in "Star Trek The Motion Picture." But there is stuff to enjoy in "V," some droll lines (a TV type: "We don't fabricate the news, that's what the government does") and good performances, especially Steven Rea as a cop with a dollop of integrity left and John Hurt in his best role in years as the fire-breathing dictator who only talks to his subordinates on a huge screen while they sit in a dark room like game-show contestants; some striking imagery (a shot of emaciated corpses in a mass grave almost torques the whole thing into another milieu) and some timely caveats for Americans who seem to be letting 9-11-01 be used by political opportunists to disabuse them of those pesky civil rights. But here's my major quibble (and where the spoiler alert comes in): when it's revealed that the torture scenes (Natalie getting her head shaved, dunked in water, dumped on a barren cell floor) were all staged by the masked man himself as some kind of test for his putative protégé for whom he's supposedly developing all this affection, my suspension of disbelief sagged considerably. It was like the revelation in "The Village" that the "pioneers" were all modern people: "You bastards, you let a sick kid die at the outset and then you sent a blind girl stumbling through the woods where she might fall into a hole or get hit by a car once she reached the road? Rot in hell, or at least jail." Or in this case: "You bastard, how did you know she wouldn't drown or die in her cell or try to kill herself or be mentally scarred for life?" I mean even a fire-disfigured "monster" needs some consistency; the Phantom of the Opera didn't turn on Christine until she'd pulled his mask off …..

By the way, if Guy Fawkes had succeeded in blowing up the King and Parliament, probably that would've meant the end of England as an entity and then maybe no America, so maybe the Americans who've made this a box-office hit should do some pondering on the ramifications of violence. Did that trainload of fertilizer at the end remind anyone (other than myself) of the late unlamented Timothy McVeigh? If you want to "do something," go check out Michael Moore's website, for instance. Don't blow stuff (or people) up; ain't good karma, methinks....

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Better than the original (for once).....

[11 March 2006]

My problem with Alexandre Aja's previous "High Tension" was the failure to acknowledge his source material (Dean Koontz' novel "Intensity") plus he abandoned Koontz' story and tacked on a ludicrous "twist ending." But when I heard he'd be doing the remake of Wes Craven's "Hills Have Eyes" I was happy because Mr. Aja clearly has a gift for ---umm----intensity on screen. My anticipation has been rewarded: Mr. Aja has done with Craven's movie what the Cramps used to do with those goofy old "novelty tunes" like "Rockin' Bones," "Googoo Muck" and "Green Door": stripped it down to it's essentials, amplified those and poured his soul into it as though this were indeed his own original work. He's also made some improvements, chiefly the "backstory" about nuclear testing in the Southwest and a remarkable sequence not in the original (granted, it reminds one of the recent "House of Wax" remake) with a guy wandering through a "ghost town" populated mostly by mannequins. Aja let 'r rip with the make-up effects (clearly this was money Craven lacked at the time; about all he could do was hire the diseased Michael Berryman for effect) to make these people REALLY mutant (granted, it reminds one of the inbred hillbillies in "Wrong Turn"). He also gave them all the same proficiency in English. Unfortunately he lets one of the desert rats make a rambling speech about the ill effects of the nuclear testing; that point was already made during the opening credits.

The plot outline is remarkably faithful to that of the original (a "normal" family on a camping trip to California runs afoul of loonies in the boonies); Aja seems to agree with me that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This means that if one's seen the original, one pretty much knows what's coming throughout, not necessarily a bad thing. Even Aja's minor changes are an improvement, e.g. we don't see Ruby right away at the gas station; the gas station owner is more sinister and absorbing, deliberately sending the family into harm's way to cover up his own involvement with the crazies but then atoning for his sins in a suitably violent manner; when one crazy snacks on a pet bird, instead of stuffing it all into his mouth he bites off the head then drinks the blood. Aja makes the family more likable than did Craven (still not people whose company I'd seek), thus it's easier to give a crap what happens to them, plus he doesn't try to give the crazies "equal time," leaving them their more effective function as the menacing Other(s). And if you came for blood, you won't be disappointed. I read that this version was edited for the R rating, but there's still plenty here in which to wallow. For those worried that Aja would try to "up the ante" by letting the baby die: relax: as I'd expected, he knows what Yanks will and will not accept. Hitchcock killed a kid in a movie in 1936 and got grief about it the rest of his life.

All the actors give Aja what he needs---for those guys buried under the make-up: you're real troopers! Personal favorite Ted Levine made the best impression on me as the retired cop; Aja doesn't let him use the "N-word" but does give him a snide line about Democrats hating guns (yet it's the "peacenik" son-in-law who manages to hit his target). Kathleen Quinlan lends her small role enough subtlety and underlying pathos to warrant an Oscar nomination in a different sort of movie. Emilie de Ravin from TV's "Lost" isn't required to do much more than scream and does that well, plus gets a nice lick in at the end. Kudos to large-eyed Laura Ortiz as Ruby who with barely any dialog conveys the sadness of the only desert rat to want to escape their little hellhole; Aja gives her a final action that comes darn close to elevating this particular gore fest to "tragedy" status.

Have to get this quibble in: is there anybody in the universe unaware that when you've been battling a homicidal maniac and he's finally down, you NEVER EVER just assume he's dead? Even if the character never saw a horror flick in his life, having gone through all that to rescue his baby, he's got a shotgun and he's not going to empty it into the body? In this instance Craven's version was better with the son-in-law repeatedly plunging the knife into the bastard's chest, exactly what I would've done. As Ice-T eloquently put it in "Trespass": "It's about survival….." I didn't mind the closing bit with the binoculars---seemed a final visual jolt as in "High Tension"---just so there's NO SEQUEL---- enough already. …."And the Academy Award for Spookiest Impersonation of an American Desert goes to----MOROCCO, for 'The Hills Have Eyes'! Accepting for Morocco…."

Freedomland (2006)

The whole seems less than the sum of it's parts....

[18 February 2006]

The trailer for "Freedomland" so palpably conjures up the 1994 Susan Smith case (the South Carolina woman who killed her kids then claimed a black carjacker had driven off with them before confessing) that the real "twist ending" here would have been to have the woman's story turn out to be true. (But nowadays such a movie is about as likely to get made as would be a remake of "Birth of a Nation.") Those behind "Freedomland" clearly had a lot of issues in mind but were unable to weave them into a compelling, cohesive dramatic narrative; instead characters periodically just stop to deliver a speech, or rather a sermon. It doesn't help that veteran producer and occasional director Joe Roth saw fit to jazz things up with lots of cheesy horror-movie shtick and whip up lots of race-baiting froth that mostly feels "scripted" instead of "captured" (think Spike Lee on an off-day). Novelist/screenwriter Richard Price ("The Wanderers") has done good work in the past but sometimes (e.g. "Kiss of Death") lets his characters more or less wander away from him. If the police in this movie had half the common sense and professionalism displayed by the real-life "redneck" cops in the Smith case, "Freedomland" would have felt a hell of a lot more credible and thus emotionally involving….

The prolific Samuel Jackson (like Gene Hackman, he works nonstop and lends at least some stature to any project) brings grizzled gravity to his part as an edgy detective with a checkered past and a son in jail. Unfortunately he shares most of his scenes with Julianne Moore who is capable of great subtlety but here is asked (or allowed) to go way, way over the top; most of her lines are screamed or whispered in a harsh North Jersey brogue that seems to come and go of it's own accord; three or four different personalities seem to inhabit the same body; the character's behavior makes no sense whether one believes her story or not. Often Jackson is reduced to passively watching Moore emote, which is how I often felt. It's an "Oscar-worthy" performance in the worst sense: externalized histrionics staged solely for the audience, or to borrow a line from Graham Greene: "…'ham' acting, the very best 'ham' …" William Forsythe as always commands attention (at least mine) whenever he's on screen and Ron Eldard as a racist cop generates a few sparks but the real jewel here is Edie Falco who at 42 reminds us that there was life before "The Sopranos" and there'll be lots of it for her afterward. Here she plays an "ordinary" woman (I like the dark hair---keep it!) whose own son was (probably) murdered years ago and who has forged a volunteer organization to do whatever they can for other missing kids and their families. Falco's laser-beam gaze hints both at iron will and heartbroken compassion as her character knows just how to deal with other characters and on just what terms. In a key scene with Moore I felt as though I were watching a surgeon gently but determinedly probing to get at the truth. It'd be unfair to say she "underplays" the role; better to say she captures a character who underplays her life. This isn't the kind of flamboyant self-repression in which Carmela Soprano indulges, but the real blue-collar deal. If only this could've been the lead character….

By the way the titular Freedomland itself is pretty much a red herring, an abandoned orphanage containing piles of tiny shoes and other items intended to get us misty-eyed. One scene takes place there (most of it's in the trailer) and in terms of plot could just as well have been an abandoned warehouse or windmill or whatnot. It's only function seems to be to conjure up a kind of "X-Files" atmosphere of mystery and make another point about the plight of children, but it's on that point that "Freedomland" most misses the boat: other than a brief shot of Moore hallucinating her missing son in a chair (half naked for some reason) the only kids seen in the movie are at a daycare center where they seem happy and well looked after. There are some real-life horror-stories about kids any of which could make for a forceful (maybe unwatchable) film, but they're not seen here. The lives of most of the adults don't seem all that unpleasant either until writer Price starts dropping strife onto them like anti-manna. I mean look, there's a classic but often forgotten cinematic rule: Show, don't tell. If you as a filmmaker want us to think life sucks, then show it sucking; go enroll at the Todd Solondz School of Ceaseless Misery, or better yet make a documentary (Michael Moore proved they can make money). Worst of all, after Roth and Price generate so much racial angst, it just gets completely dropped; not even one line at the end about any aftermath for better or worse. If we're not supposed to care about it at the end, why should we have cared about it before? Did we get "played"? Every so often a movie shows someone using an asthma inhaler, and they never get it completely right (my mother has it). How hard would it be to ask someone about it?

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Early "loonies in the boonies" antics....

[12 February 2006]

Having watched this on video last night and then spent much of today shoveling snow after the biggest blizzard in these parts in a decade, I'm thinking the desert sounds pretty appealing right about now, so it takes an effort to recall that in cinema it's inevitably a spooky realm (not just in America, as "Wolf Creek" recently reminded us). "Why would people want to live out there by themselves? They must be up to no good!" "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" established the more or less permanent pattern for this (never mind that it was based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin farm boy who never saw the desert in his life, nor even ever left Wisconsin). When Wes Craven took a crack at it, he'd already made "Last House on the Left," his Hippie updating of Bergman's "Virgin Spring," already demonstrating one of his chief traits: a pretty wide and wholly humorless mean streak. In "Hills" he adds another one: tension dissolving into slapstick violence. Although he's always been associated with horror, one senses his heart isn't really in it; in "New Nightmare" he even played himself slagging the genre. His recent "Red Eye" was straight-up action shot through with his beloved meanness; did decent box office, so I'm happy for him.

"Hills" shows the now-well-familiar "extended family" on vacation in their "recveh," blithely ignoring the advice from the obligatory gas-station eccentric to stay on the main highway. Craven shows how uninterested he is in developing suspense by introducing one of the feral clan, "Ruby," immediately; still he knows to whet our appetite by keeping the desert rats mostly out of sight for a while. Once they appear, they come off as so rabidly predatory (with a widely varying command of English) one doubts they would not have killed/eaten one another long ago. ("Two Thousand Maniacs" had subtler acting….seriously.) Craven gives them almost equal time with the "normal" family, making the latter as unlikable as possible; the father's a retired cop from Craven's own Cleveland who uses "the N-word" and berates his family constantly; the mother's a dotty walking set of clichés; the blond boy's a sullen punk; the blonde girl's a self-absorbed brat. At one point they all share a chuckle over the memory of one of their big Alsatian dogs killing a neighbor's smaller dog; shortly afterward they huddle for a laconic prayer. Just as Sinead O'Connor popularized the term "recovering Catholic," Craven could do the same for "recovering Baptist" (although the late Sam Kinison was funnier with it). Craven's only goal seems to be to create a "behavioral sink" for all these unpleasant people and let them have at it. The violence is fairly impressive given the limited budget and need to get the "right" rating but in the coldness of Craven's universe, nothing really resonates much; I can't think of a movie with this much mayhem that left so little impression on me. It ends with a freeze frame of the one almost-rational character plunging a knife into a bad guy's chest for about the fortieth time, as though inviting us to mourn the damnation of humanity or something, but gee whiz, the guy didn't have a gun, these people were hard to kill plus they'd kidnapped his baby for crying out loud; Wes probably felt very daring inserting that element but it felt cheesy since I knew the baby wouldn't die. Wes would not have had the stones for that; nobody would've back then. Maybe Mr. Aja will in his remake, but I doubt it---not in the version seen Stateside anyway. But if he sees fit to kill off the excruciatingly annoying Emilie de Ravin (from "Lost"), that alone would make it worth the price of admission…..

Michael Berryman has the only name/face most people would recognize---hard to forget the latter. When I saw a newspaper add for "Hills" as a teenager, I thought it was about extraterrestrials or something. (Please, somebody hire him for more comedic roles!) By the way, rent the unjustly neglected "Race with the Devil" for a much more compelling look at vacationers vs. loonies in the boonies....

The Matador (2005)

Sean Connery also became a much more interesting actor post-James Bond...

[28 January 2006]

For those who like myself regard bullfighting as barbaric animal abuse, there's a long message at the end of the credits of "The Matador" to the effect that while the filmmakers don't endorse it as such, it's being presented as an aspect of Mexican culture, it wasn't staged for the movie, and no actual bulls actually get killed on screen. (I chose that moment for my bathroom break, so I can't vouch for how realistic it looks.) Since one knows from the trailer that the point of the film is to depict a professional murderer in at least a somewhat sympathetic light, one's not surprised that the key scenes occur in Mexico, where (to borrow Lee Marvin's classic line from "Pocket Money") "these people have a very rough-and-tumble lifestyle down here; they don't even have a word for 'rough-and-tumble,' you know that?" Even the "telenovelas" are pretty rough-and-tumble, especially by Yank standards…..

I can see why Pierce Brosnan chose this script for his big thespian change of pace after "Die Another Day" (and the two he did afterwards that I haven't seen): it's a "meaty" role, lots of "quirks" to the character. He's a grizzled assassin named Julian whose reliability is getting questioned by his mysterious "handlers." Julian's recent squeamishness (he hallucinates that he sees himself in place of the victim) doesn't really square with what we see of him most of the time and probably is just meant as a plot point; the fun is watching the former Remington Steele/James Bond wake up with a hangover, flirt with schoolgirls, tell dirty jokes, smoke, drink, borrow a hooker's toenail polish, parade near-naked through a hotel lobby accompanied by the Cramps' "Garbageman" and other enjoyable "bits of business." In Mexico City Julian meets Danny, a shlemiel businessman played by Greg Kinnear, who after "Auto Focus" and now this is extorting respect from me as an actor whether I like it or not. (Maybe it helps that I never saw "Talk Soup.") Kinnear of course knows he's the "foil" here for Brosnan's antics, but he invests the role with enough gravity and just a hint of "out there" that the highly contrived meeting and subsequent interactions of Danny and Julian are just enough to make us suspend our disbelief (for the most part.) There's a crucial scene in Mexico City that we don't get to see until the end as a flashback. I can't at all see why writer/director Richard Shepard thought it would be more effective that way; I think the whole second half of the flick would have resonated more if we'd seen it chronologically. When in the lead-up to the climax Julian tells Danny "You owe me" to persuade Danny to help him kill someone, I spent the rest of the film somewhat distracted as to what that would prove to be; maybe they had gay sex or something? (That would have made Julian's earlier reference to "margaritas and cock" more than just a crude jolt.) The third key figure is Danny's wife who is called "Bean" for some reason (if there was an explanation in the script, I'm sorry I missed it; she doesn't look terribly Hispanic). She's played by Hope Davis who reportedly has been very impressive in movies I haven't seen (I admit I don't recall her from "Flatliners" or "Kiss of Death"). She's called upon to make us believe that when Julian shows up at her Denver home late at night in a snowstorm months after the Mexico City scenes, she not only welcomes him in but gets drunk with the guys, dances with the killer and eagerly asks to see his gun (which rather disappointingly is just a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver; it would've been funny to make it a Beretta or Walther PPK and wouldn't have detracted from the context). Davis is up to the task. Where the hell was she when they were casting the "Addams Family" flick? She could've been the sister of Carolyn Jones (from the TV show).

"The Matador" can be seen as part of a recent trend to try to revitalize the venerable "black comedy" genre. The British of course were and are the masters but we Yanks have had a fair crack at it, at least up until the mid-Seventies when "Star Wars" immediately and permanently lowered the bar for American cinematic success to comic-book level, but there have been a few beacons since then e.g. "…and Justice for All" or "Prizzi's Honor." It's found a new home on cable TV ---excuse me a minute: "HANDS OFF, FCC GOONS! IF I'M PAYING FOR IT, I WANT WHAT I WANT! BUY A DAMN V-CHIP FOR THE DAMN KIDS!" ---anyway, especially on HBO in the wake of "The Sopranos" where most of the characters are at least somewhat sympathetic murderers. But I still like to see it on the big screen especially with an "R" rating; I almost feel duty-bound to lend those my financial support, all six or seven bucks' worth for the matinée. So, welcome to the wonderful world of character parts, Pierce! Sean's been at it for three decades now; hell, he even copped an Oscar long after his Bond period, no reason you couldn't do likewise with the right part in a movie upon which the gods smile with big box office… Some quibbles: using the tragic death of Danny and Bean's child as a plot point almost derails the whole credulity train. Would Danny want to have anything remotely to do with a life-taker (or become one himself) after that? Brosnan's accent as Julian is impossible to place, but maybe that was to emphasize the character's everywhere-and-nowhere background. Also I don't recall seeing anyone's breath when they were outside in the snowstorm. Danny growing a moustache like Julian seemed kinda lame. Xavier Cugat's chihuahua was awfully cute, though.

Wolf Creek (2005)

Happy bloody Christmas, mates.....

[25 December 2005]

Miguel Cervantes once wrote "…is it not better to stay peacefully at home rather than roam the world seeking better bread than is made of wheat…" Staying at home seemed an even better idea after I'd seen "Wolf Creek," the Australian import finally released here on Christmas Day---talk about "counter-programming." Inspired by (but not claiming to be a documentary about) the real exploits of convicted murderer Ivan Milat and others, "Creek" has had the benefit of word of mouth and an effective low-key ad campaign and damn near lives up (or down) to it. Producer/writer/director Greg McLean's not pulling any punches in his feature-film debut. Not since "Wrong Turn" (from which "Creek" borrows a few elements, likewise from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Blair Witch Project," "Breakdown," "Joy Ride," "House of Wax" and inevitably "Mad Max") has there been a balls-to-the-walls horror flick delivering this quality of goods. ("High Tension" had it's moments but for me suffered from it's unacknowledged rip-off of Dean Koontz' "Intensity," it's comically Grand-Guignol degree of splatter and it's ludicrous premise-annihilating ending.) Ultimately these are chase movies more or less. For these to work (at least for me) there needs to be at least some glimmer of likability to the victim characters (as opposed to "House of 1000 Corpses" where they were so annoying that I wanted them all to die immediately) and they need to have at least a shred of a chance of escaping (as opposed to "Devil's Rejects" which felt like a "snuff film"). "Creek" fits this bill. I don't think we even always need a "happy ending" any more; don't look for one here.

At the outset a bunch of young twits are drinking and cavorting at the beach and at a swimming pool, reminding me of that TV ad with Paul Hogan for Australian tourism---"Okay, number one---you're gonna get wet." (The famous "knife" dialog from "Crocodile Dundee" is referenced not once but twice.) Eventually we focus on three of the carefree "Na na na na na na, live for today" youths as they drive across approximately eight zillion miles of Outback. Two of them, "Liz" and "Ben" (all the cast members were enjoyably unknown to me) seem to be putative lovers; there's a kissing scene with them that's really sweet and natural-seeming; the "odd girl out," "Kristy," warns Ben not to mess with Liz's emotions or Kristy'll kill him, a little easy irony since we know they'll all be in deep doo-doo soon. There's what Roger Ebert might call the semi-obligatory scene where the kids stop for gas and have a run in with the crude sexist bullying local yokels. (Can there ever be a movie in which local yokels in a bar or gas station are just "regular people" or maybe even nice?) Then there's the inevitable car failure with a nice red herring about radiation from a meteorite crater possibly being responsible. Then the ostensible Good Samaritan shows up with a tow-truck, and we're off to the proverbial races….

I won't delve into the details; if they're why you pay to see movies like this, I'll let you enjoy 'm fresh; I don't think you'll be disappointed unless you're seeking geysers of gore (go rent "High Tension" instead). The terror and violence is played absolutely straight, no winking at the camera here. The veteran Australian character actor who plays the killer hits just the right note: not an eye-rolling loony, not a zombie, not a mutant, basically a guy who's been intimate with violent death most of his life (there's a fleeting Vietnam reference, reminding us that wasn't just a Yank war) and having been alone in the wilderness so long is unaware of any limits on anything he can do. There are only a few scenes where the script requires the victim characters to act with traditional horror-movie stupidity, notably when Liz, desperately searching for a set of car keys so she can rescue her friend and then flee, seems to have plenty of time to watch video footage shot by earlier victims. Most of that scene in fact is lifted directly from "Wrong Turn" but there's a nice nasty twist to it which latter provokes only a little of the "Hey, wait a minute…" reaction. It also seems a slight stretch at the end when we're informed that not only were the two girls' bodies never found (nor, I guess, that of the nice old guy who got killed trying to be helpful) but the killer and his encampment just vanished into thin air. I mean even in Australia they have the latest search technology I would've thought, but then it's fiction after all, plus the place is really really big.… For those who care, there are some great visuals including an absolutely gorgeous sunset shot, plus the music is very subtle and effective---maybe too much so, as at the end I came away feeling rather somber and reflective, or maybe that's what Mr. McLean wanted. (I'd be curious to know if he's seen the original "The Vanishing," which left me in a similar mood). But then on the way home I had the "Bomb the Rocks" CD by the 5.6.7.8s playing & I wasn't "bummed out" at all, even thinking that the lilting ballad "Dream Boy" would've worked for some of the killer's scenes….

So see the Australian beauties of nature in the movie! Don't go there and get killed! We'll keep importing the beer!

Mr. Vampire (1985)

"Boy Meets Ghost...."

[6 December 2005]

There's a (sub)plot in "Mr. Vampire" that held me in greater thrall than that concerning the title character, namely the "Lady Ghost" (Pauline Wong, unknown to me like the rest of the cast) who takes a shin(ing) to one of the young pupils of the usually exasperated spirit-battling Master. Wong's not as "conventionally pretty" as the other female character ("Ting Ting," which sounds like a better name for a Panda bear than a person) but I think her face has more character to it. She first appears at night in a carriage shlepped by four rather fey ghostly underlings who obligingly disappear (along with the carriage) when she picks out the target of her amorous urgings. Hitching a ride on the back of his transportation, she seems all set to make her move when an inconvenient tree branch knocks her onto her ethereal derriere. Of course it would spoil one's enjoyment of the story to ponder why ghosts are sometimes prone to the same physical mishaps as are we warm folk; it'd be like asking why Chinese eat with chopsticks: well, why not? Later when the Master and the ghost are engaged in combat, the latter detaches her head and flings it at him, thus going Oddjob from "Goldfinger" one better.

As for the vampire, who is usually referred to as "the corpse" by other characters, he may prove something of a head-scratcher for devotees of British and American bloodsuckers. He and the other vampires (who physically resemble Fu Manchu and a bunch of clones of same) hop around like bunnies in slow motion and each is rendered ineffective by a piece of yellow paper attached to his head. A mortal can hide in plain sight from them by holding his/her breath, which I thought was the movie's best touch, reminiscent of Schwarzenegger disguising himself with mud in "Predator." Eventually Mr. Vampire morphs into a more conventional (thus less interesting) monster, stops hopping and starts blowing down doors like the Big Bad Wolf. Lots of mayhem ensues laced with the kind of broad slapstick antics that one comes to expect from Chinese action/horror/fantasy flicks, at least until they got "arty" in the last few years. Any viewer who grew up on Hollywood fare got used to having his/her emotional reactions dictated to him/her----"OKAY, HERE'S THE FUNNY PART, NOW HERE'S THE SCARY PART, NOW HERE'S THE SEXY PART, NOW IT'S SCARY AGAIN" ----but in Asia they seem less concerned with such strict demarcations---"We just present it, you do the reacting." This gets really intriguing when they take the same approach to topics we would consider "sensitive," like torture or homosexuality. One wonders how director Ricky Lau or his compatriots would have tackled a topic like, say, Abu Ghraib---maybe it would've become a musical comedy. I'd probably rather watch that than a version by Steven Spielberg or Mel ("Holy snuff film, Batman!") Gibson… Anyway if you rent the video from Facets, the subtitles are in both Chinese and English and not always easy to read, but the gist of it is pretty get-able. There's some nice satire of social niceties e.g. the "English tea" scene. The clearly limited special-effects budget is put to good use. A good time should be had by all who view it receptively, preferably having consumed some alcohol. Only one disappointment as I saw it---remember there was a spoiler warning! ---the Lady Ghost is sent packing without her object of desire. She seemed like a lot more fun than that dour Master….

As for why "sticky rice" should have vampire-battling properties lacked by regular rice: again, why not? How'd that whole garlic thing get going, anyway? Making it up as we went along, were we, Mr. Stoker?

Single Room Furnished (1966)

"'Prostitute' is a beautiful word...."

[15 November 2005]

This movie would be unwatchable if not for Jayne Mansfield making her final screen appearance. Based (painfully obviously) on a stage play, it has characters who seem borrowed from "Marty" and other sources pouring out platitudes on love, loneliness etc. The actors deliver their lines as though each of them were alone on-stage---sorry, on-screen. (One scene takes place on a fishing pier. It could just as well been set in a park, or a cemetery, or the moon for that matter.) Mansfield plays either three characters or one character with three names. The third act---sorry, sequence---is the best, with Mansfield as "Eileen," the bar hostess (amongst other activities). She entertains a convention of toymakers (made me nostalgic for when such items were actually manufactured here, as opposed to China or elsewhere) then struts regally along the city street (I imagined Little Richard popping out from an alley: "The girl still can't help it….") to her "single room, furnished" to find her twitchy sailor boyfriend (who today would be a "stalker," I guess) waiting for her. The sequence is filmed in mostly long takes with stark lighting, as though the apartment were in outer space with a searchlight finding the actors. Mansfield registers an astounding range of emotions as Eileen takes off her make-up and prepares to retire for the night as the sailor (shriekingly overplayed by an actor whose last film this also apparently was) recounts his life story and rants about them running off to get married. The most striking shot is of Eileen lying on her bed with her face in front of the camera with the sailor's face hovering overhead; her sad street-hardened wistfulness is absolutely on mark as she hints at the sort of "work" she's done in the room. "'Prostitute' is a beautiful word," she murmurs almost dreamily, "compared to 'whore' and the others…." For a moment she gets caught up in the sailor's giddy plans to go live on an island but then when he accidentally breaks a prized doll of hers given by a dead former lover, she turns on him and drives him away. Even as she laughs in his face, her regret is visible just behind her eyes. It's a mature professional performance, filling me with regret that her talent always had to play second fiddle to her, um, natural attributes. It seems especially unfair that she was always "in Marilyn Monroe's shadow." Both were eager to perform well but every line Monroe ever said on-screen sounded like a line reading. Mansfield could convey the impression that her character had an existence beyond the camera's range.

I rented "Room" from Facets along with "Female Jungle," Mansfield's screen debut. The latter is hardly the worst no-budget early-Fifties "noir" I've ever seen, in fact parts of it share the kind of Expressionistic malevolence seen in Fritz Lang's earlier "The Big Heat." (It's one of only a few films directed by stalwart B-movie actor Bruno VeSota who also makes a cameo appearance as one of the toymakers in "Room.") Mansfield is in only a couple of scenes in "Jungle" as the bed-hopping "bimbo" but her vitality and ease on camera are unforgettable. She already comes off as a seasoned pro. There of course have been a lot of American actresses with "sex appeal" but oddly enough, not that many for whom it folds seamlessly into the rest of their personality as opposed to just "fronting." (Want an example? Okay, here's one: Patricia Neal---yeah, that's right, from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Hud." That's one sexy adult woman totally confident in who and what she is. Want a more recent example? Okay---Elizabeth Ashley. Watch her in that elevator scene in "Paternity" where she's just standing and talking ---oh, man. I'm there if called.) Such actresses have a better shot at full flowering in Europe where they prefer women not to be cartoons (unless of course they're goofing on some Yank icon e.g. in "Barbarella.") Mansfield had some European roles but of course back then (to paraphrase a line from "Bladerunner") "If you're not Hollywood, you're little people." Seems a damn shame she didn't live longer or more recently. There are just a lot more avenues of employment available nowadays. Don't even get me started on the position Orson Welles would have as a contemporary filmmaker….

So there it is, my little tribute to an American actress and woman who, in my humble opinion, deserves to be more than just a lingering joke in the cultural lexicon---"Oh yeah, the big boobs---didn't she get decapitated in a car accident?" (Actually the head was not completely severed.) At least she didn't go into a funk and kill herself like Monroe. (Okay, okay, like everyone I can't be "really sure" what happened to Monroe, but only in the impractical sense that one can never be "really sure" about anything.) I find it worth watching "Special Victims Unit" on TV just to see Mansfield's daughter Mariska Hargitay pursuing sexual predators. I like to think that if there's such a thing as "looking down from above" (which I doubt), Jayne is doing that now in approval of the kind of serious, searing part she herself was never considered "qualified" to do…..

Jarhead (2005)

The real tragedy of the military is the waste of all that young testosterone....

[5 November 2005]

...Whew, lengthy summary there, but that about sums up my gut reaction to this film. There's a lot in "Jarhead" that may seem mysterious to someone who was never a young male who signed up for one of the branches of armed service, especially with the expectation of going to war shortly. The bulk of this movie takes place between the summer 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the following spring when our massed forces simply rolled over the Iraqi trenches, burying thousands of them alive (this rightly isn't depicted in "Jarhead," since it wasn't witnessed by the guy who wrote the book on which the movie is based) before stopping short from ousting Saddam Hussein because Bush Senior and his crew (including Dick Cheney) correctly believed that it would lead to chaos and a Vietnam-like morass for us. (This of course didn't stop Bush Junior and his crew (including Dick Cheney) from getting us into exactly that situation twelve years later, but that's been dealt with before....) In a nutshell, "Jarhead" depicts all these young gungho Marines going nuts because they're not permitted to do their job, i.e. engage and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver, or more bluntly: kill people and break things. An "ordinary person" may think "So what's the problem? They're alive and well," etc. To the extent "Jarhead" has a flaw, it's that it simply relies on the realities about which the real Mr. Swofford wrote. If the viewer doesn't "buy into" that, then the movie won't succeed for him/her.

One of the many things I liked about "Jarhead" is that it's NOT about politics, at all. When one Marine character tries to bring that up ("We're here fighting for the oil companies," etc.) another character cuts that short: "We're here now. Everything else is bull---t." Both are correct. The character whose line that is, played by the intelligence-exuding Peter Sarsgaard, is if anything the most intelligent of the group, also the most cynical and the most gungho; in a cruel twist of fate, he's the only one of them other than the sergeant who wants to be a Marine for life, but they won't let him stay because he lied about having a criminal record.

If director Sam Mendes has succeeded at his task, then by the time you get to what I regard as the climax, with the two snipers finally ready to consummate their mission by shooting the Iraqi officer in the tower, you'll fully understand and embrace their reaction when that gets taken away from them. If your reaction is similar to that of the asshole Major, then I guess Mendes has failed, and maybe should have just presented it as a straight documentary.

Some random plug points: Sarsgaard stands out in an exemplary cast; his part is not so large as to preclude a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for him. The photography admirably transforms southern California and Mexico into Kuwait and Iraq, aided of course by the inevitable computer graphics. The scene with the Marines encountering the ghost convoy with the burned and blackened corpses is suitably eerie, although I wish movies would quit showing people vomiting on-screen because they can't get the projectile nature of it right; it looks like people spitting something out, not something being forced out. (Whenever I've had to throw up, I felt like the poor sap in "Alien," only not through the chest of course.) Nice to see a war movie occasionally acknowledge "friendly fire," such as that which took the life of former NFL star Pat Tillman. Near the end I liked the line "We won't have to come back here..." letting the sad irony just briefly resonate. The scene with the jar heads getting engrossed in "Apocalypse Now" was just brilliant (at Fort Benning I knew a guy who had the dialog from that one memorized). Minor quibble: the scene with Swofford threatening the other Marine at gunpoint in the tent was the only one that felt somewhat "staged," where Jake Gyllenhaal seemed to be "acting." Like Matthew Modine in "Full Metal Jacket," he has to carry the movie playing a character who seems not always believable even though (or maybe because) it's based on a real person. Somehow Mr. Gyllenhall's Swofford is always either too much of a "wise guy" or not enough of one....

That brings me to my semi-final point: yeah, I know "Jarhead" reminds people of other movies, especially "Full Metal Jacket," especially early on. That couldn't have been avoided anyway, but it fits with the motif of these young guys living in the shadow of Vietnam. ("That's Vietnam music," Gyllenhaal laments at one point, "can't we have our own music?") If anything I credit Mendes with making the Vietnam analogy less overbearing than I probably would have done myself. (The government did learn one thing from 'Nam though, nowadays they don't let us actually see our dead or wounded if they can prevent it.) One final quibble: "Jarhead" makes no reference to "Gulf War Syndrome" which (unsurprisingly) the Veterans Administration has been trying to downplay as much as possible, but maybe that wasn't in Mr. Swofford's book which I confess I haven't read.

I have an unhappy hunch that "Jarhead" may suffer the same fate as "Blackhawk Down," another painfully meticulous rendition of an episode in our military history that we just seem to want to forget. But those two will, I believe, be in the pantheon of (anti)war movies some day, along with "Paths of Glory" and "A Midnight Clear" and a few others. Maybe the best scene in "Jarhead" is with the graying Vietnam veteran on the bus with the young studs staring at him politely but quizzically. "All wars are different; all wars are the same," kids shooting their youthful vim/vigor wad at the behest of the "stupid white men"....

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

Got smoke?

[31 October 2005]

The brilliance of George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck" lies in it's very tight (almost claustrophobia-inducing) evocation of an early 1950's news studio with all those clean-cut button-down white guys (the few women on hand tend to get sent on errands) with their horn-rimmed glasses and their bottles of Scotch and their ubiquitous cigarettes. There is so much smoke wafting around that it becomes the element in which these guys function, like the water in a fish tank. Clooney didn't need to pound the point home by showing the ad for Kent cigarettes but I did get a chuckle out of it. The heady mixture of nicotine and testosterone palpably drives the news crew toward their fateful piece on Sen. Joe McCarthy which, for all they know in advance, may be the cliff over which their lives and careers plunge. Clooney has impressed me hugely with his ability to keep this great ensemble cast (including himself, not as the "star") on pace. I avoided his "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (having had my fill of that "Gong Show" guy back in the Seventies) but I look forward to his future directorial efforts. D. Strathairn is quietly masterful as Edward R. Murrow; I look forward to being disappointed when the Academy snubs him for an Oscar nomination. The comparison between the anti-communism crusade then and the anti-terrorism crusade now is merely made available to be observed, not trumpeted to the heavens. The line "Dissent is not disloyalty" sums it up pithily.

Given what "Night" does so well, it seems almost churlish on my part to mention some things it doesn't do and probably couldn't have done without disrupting it's artistic confines. I personally would have liked a sense of how the "Red scare" permeated the populace as a whole; I would recommend Cedric Belfrage's book "The American Inquisition" which includes annual "fever charts" detailing that in 1953 the town of Moscow, Idaho demanded that the capital of the Soviet Union change it's name, or when citizens in Wisconsin were asked "What is a Communist" responses included "A crook, I suppose" or "A person who wants war." In 1954 a woman legally changed her name from Allred to Allgood and a high school in Idaho expunged the word "comrade" from the school song. Sound a little silly? Does anyone remember "freedom fries" recently? It also would've been a big mouthful to chew if "Night" had made the point that "Tailgunner Joe" was essentially a figurehead. He himself had little interest in communism until it became a ticket to fame; he got most of his headline-grabbing tidbits from the American Reichsfuehrer J. Edgar Hoover (McCarthy was a frequent guest in Hoover's private box at the local racetrack) and he was tolerated by General Eisenhower until he "went too far" and denounced the army as "pinko." ("Night" mentions several real persons whose names were besmirched but not Major Irving Peress, the "pink dentist," whose family received threatening letters and phone calls and rocks thrown through their windows. "Night" just barely hints at the anti-Semitic undercurrent of the phobia, culminating in the "public burning" of the Rosenbergs for "giving away the Bomb" based on evidence that would get laughed out of most courts today.) After McCarthy was allowed to "twist in the wind" and drink himself to death, Hoover continued his police-state activities with other allies, but we never heard about any of this until "Watergate." Read "The Boss" by Athan Theoharis and John S. Cox for the whole sordid story.

By all means see "Night" which deserves a ton of credit for getting people thinking about this again if nothing else. By the way, beware of revisionists like Ann Coulter claiming that McCarthy was validated by the "Venona Project," the secret program to intercept and decode Soviet diplomatic telegrams. Only a fraction of the cables were decrypted (some only partly) and their meaning is still debated by scholars. (The Soviets apparently did have two sources within the Manhattan Project, "Quantum" and "Pers," who are still unidentified.) To assert, like Coulter, that "hundreds of agents of an enemy foreign power were working for the U.S. government" is the kind of logical leap much favored by the Far Right ….never mind where that lands.

I wish that "Night" had ended with a brief text mentioning that Murrow, a true American hero, died of lung cancer, thus completing the cigarette motif. I'm sure he would have ruefully allowed that there too, "the fault lies not within our stars but within ourselves…"

Elizabethtown (2005)

Um...is this what "they" mean by "life-affirming"?

[29 October 2005]

At one point in "Elizabethtown" the two leads (played by O. Bloom and K. Dunst) have what may be the longest phone conversation in the history of cinema (I'm surprised their batteries never ran down) during which they discuss who's the "they" in "They say that..." This made for a pretty funny one-panel "Far Side" cartoon some years back but here it's typical of dialogue that makes a point then goes on way past that. Writer/director C. Crowe seems to be poaching on R. Altman territory ("Nashville" et al.) trying for a kind of interweaving of characters and subplots letting the viewer feel constantly like the "fly on the wall" eavesdropping. But Altman always had a coldly judicious view of how compelling his characters were and how much to let us see of their lives. Crowe seems to expect we'll see all these Kentuckians as "kinfolk" because his protagonist has to.

My problem with the movie began with the premise: Bloom is a designer of an athletic shoe that apparently nobody wants, thus costing his company tons of money. Do major business enterprises really plunge down such suicidal blind alleys, I mean outside "The Simpsons"? Don't they have safeguards and contingency plans and whatnot? Anyway Bloom gets fired and decides to kill himself (as Norman Bates put it, "that seems rather an extreme reaction") concocting an exercise/killing-machine that the people behind "Saw" must envy. Before he can carry it out, his sister calls informing him their father has died and he must drop whatever he's doing to take care of it. (Phone-interrupted suicide has also been done before, e.g. "Way of the Gun.") It's too bad we don't see more of the sister, a "passive-aggressive" poster child; Judy Greer gives far and away the film's best performance. On the flight to Kentucky Bloom meets a "stalker" stewardess (sorry, "flight attendant") (Dunst) who WILL NOT leave him alone (providing the best comedic moments) and who had me hoping this flick maybe would become a new loopy twist on "Fatal Attraction." Only later did I grasp that Dunst is supposed to be the kind of cinematic pixielike "free spirit" who "opens our eyes to the possibilities of" yadda yadda yadda.

Don't get me wrong, I could point out any number of enjoyable moments between Bloom's arrival in E-town and his road trip back home--in fact, here are two: the hyper little kid barfing on D-Day from "Animal House" and Susan Sarandon's tap dance to "Moon River," her giddiest hoofing since "Rocky Horror Picture Show"---but they're just a collection of moments, they don't develop any narrative momentum (in fact they could be shown in reverse order with the same effect) or compound our emotional engagement (or at least mine). They depend totally on the charm of the actors to carry it off; other than Sarandon (who's not on-screen nearly enough) a little of all these people went a long way for me. As for the trip back home itself--"fuhgeddaboutit," it's like a whole new movie (that had already seemed long to that point) with Bloom following an incredibly intricate set of instructions left for him by Dunst, including a tribute to M. L. King and a reference to the Oklahoma City bombing and a conclusion that I would have found stunningly implausible if my suspension of disbelief had not already long since collapsed.

As Denis Leary said in one role, "I'm Irish, maybe I'm thick." I don't know what Crowe's trying to say here--"Enjoy life"? "Don't kill yourself if you get fired"? "Make peace with your parents before they're dead"? Okay, thanks! I appreciate that the Kentuckians were not cartoonish rednecks although it seemed a stretch that having once been told that Bloom was from Oregon, they continued to refer to him as a Californian. "Well hell, they's both a fair piece out west from here, ain't they?..." "Elizabethtown" makes in passing one serious and valid point --"You can't be buddies with your son" --then negates it with the rock-drummer dad apparently successfully doing just that. Lord only knows how many feral children in public places have made me wish that current parents would look up "parent" in the dictionary. Guess we just need to let the kids see videos of buildings blowing up "real good" ....

Serenity (2005)

Now I can be mad at Fox all over again....

[10/10 · 26 October 2005]

After I first saw this a few weeks ago, I wasn't going to do a review, mostly because some others that I read seemed to express it's qualities pretty well. But now that I've seen it three times, I figure I ought to "go on record." What I chiefly want to plug is the underlying theme rejecting the notion of a "better world," a "world without sin." Every governmental tyranny on record has had some "good intentions" among the skeletons in it's closet; now we have an Administration that ostensibly wants to convert the whole world to our way of life, at gunpoint if necessary. It doesn't require a ton of imagination to project this attitude into the future. I'd be tickled to learn that the Operative is a descendant of Condoleeza Rice (after whom an oil tanker was once named, then re-named after she became well known), Bush's fellow Christian and current Secretary of Scolding Other Countries.

Of course it helps your appreciation of "Serenity" if previously you were a fan of Joss Whedon's lamentably short-lived "Firefly" (more on that below) and before that of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." Those shows will have prepared you for Mr. Whedon's genius in assembling a sparkling ensemble cast, extracting from each of them his or her best work (go back and watch all those movies Adam Baldwin was in--who knew he has such a flair for comedy?), creating a fresh perspective on vampires or Westerns, writing such witty dialogue (how many screenwriters create their own jargon?), directing so fluidly and tweaking viewer expectations without disrupting the premise, e.g. Mal telling Zoe "Now if something happens, I want you to take the ship and.... come and rescue me."

Now to my real point: the Fox corporation can "kiss my ass from now on," to borrow a Belushi line in "Animal House." I won't even delve into their right-wing political agenda that seeps into their fictional programming (that last season of "24" had the most justifications for torture being expressed by a character since "Battle of Algiers" forty years ago). I just want to focus on their complete and shameful transformation from nurturer of innovation to run-of-the-mill ratings whore. "The Simpsons" wouldn't last three weeks if it were a new show on Fox nowadays. It probably wouldn't have lasted three weeks back in the late Eighties if Fox hadn't been so desperate for viewers. Once Fox got comfy, though, once they had those Big Sports locked up--plus NASCAR, although I'm not sure if driving cars in a circle really fast qualifies as a sport---well then, sure they'd put interesting stuff on so they could make the announcement, then they'd yank it just as fast if it wasn't an immediate smash. I'll only mention the two shows I still miss the most, those of John Leguizamo and George Carlin. (I'd be happy to pay for cable TV just to see the specials from those guys.) When "Firefly" was on a few years ago, I was so sure that Fox would yank it too that I was reluctant to let myself get attached to it, but like a fool I did so, then of course right on cue, it was "outta here." It's nice that "Firefly" episodes are now available on DVD; it'd be even nicer if Fox could be prevented from getting any of the lucre.

To finish with just a brief (but loving) quibble about the Reavers: these guys're so rabidly crazy that it's hard to envision how they spend their time when they're not actually attacking people. They're like old movie monsters who only need to exist so they can be in scary scenes. They must need major tranquilizers to get to sleep.

How can one not love a movie where the guy piloting the spaceship has little toy dinosaurs surrounding him? I'll miss that character if there's a sequel, but that's part of Whedon's genius, knowing when to inject that sudden note of realistic tragedy; can anyone who saw Willow's girlfriend get killed on "Buffy" tell me it wasn't like a slap in the face?

The Constant Gardener (2005)

If only good intentions = good movies....

[25 October 2005]

It's laudable to want to make a film depicting the depredations of big global corporations (in this case the drug companies, an especially tempting target) against hapless Third World people who, like Blanche DuBois, have "always depended on the kindness of strangers" and usually received far from same. I haven't read the John Le Carre novel upon which this is based but I noted in the closing credits his statement that the real hijinks of the drug companies and their political allies make his work of fiction seem tame, which I have no reason to doubt. But intention must be followed by execution to be effective; there's not much in "Constant Gardener" that makes sense, starting with the title. The British diplomat Justin Quayle played by Ralph Fiennes keeps a garden but then abandons it (along with everything else in his life) to go leaping down the dubious path left by his wife Tessa, who's murdered in the first few minutes of running time. Talk about "carrying a torch," this guy's a walking forest fire.

I haven't been Fiennes' biggest fan but he's always watchable at the least, a kind of twitchy English answer to Kevin Costner. He's a master of the portentous delayed reaction, e.g. here in the scene where he meets his future wife when she delivers a geopolitical diatribe at a lecture he's given. Rachel Weisz as the wife has a kind of free pass here, playing not so much a person as a collection of idealized traits, rather like Costner's wife in "Dragonfly"; she also takes it upon herself to be the savior and avenging angel of downtrodden nonwhite people to the exclusion of all else. She's seen mostly in flashbacks that Justin's having, although some of her scenes don't have him as a character. In order for "Gardener" to work, we have to accept that (A) these memories rekindle such passion in him that he almost joyfully flings himself down the path to doom, and (B) the drug companies and their political allies are not only evil but really pretty stupid. If Tessa was becoming a pain in their butt with her probing and crusading, how hard would it have been to get her and her husband transferred elsewhere? Or why couldn't they get her arrested and detained somewhere, like Lori Berenson in South America? Or if they wanted to kill her, why not make it look like an accident or set up some enraged natives like Amy Biehl in South Africa? Or have her get run down by a bulldozer, like Rachel Corrie in Palestine? Then when Justin follows suit, why follow him over several continents delivering one "last warning" after another ("Okay, we really mean it this time!") before finally blasting him full of holes which would be bound to attract some attention? I mean gee whiz, Nancy Drew could've picked apart this evil conspiracy pretty handily. The director, F. Meirelles, did "City of God" a few years ago, Brazil's answer to Q. Tarantino; the jumpy camera trickery is at least less headache-inducing than the recent "Stay" but still calls attention away from the story in which we're supposed to be getting engrossed.

Maybe I'm just a little grumpy in that flashy self-sacrifice really doesn't impress me much. It's hard to be much of a do-gooder when you're dead. Living means you keep your options open even if that entails (gasp!) making some compromises or re-thinking your approach or falling back to regroup. Some of the supporting characters like "Ghita" or "Birgit" or "Ham" strike me as more effective foot soldiers for "fighting the power." Martyrs may be great for starting a new religion but if the goal is to bring about just a smidgen of "heaven on earth," then we'll be wanting "all hands on deck."

Favorite performances: the too-seldom-seen-by-me G. McSorley as an embittered businessman and the busy P. Postlethwaite adding to his collection of exotic accents. (Weisz' accent is a bit odd at times, as though remembering her character is supposed to be American or something.) Nice soundtrack. I enjoyed that little AIDS play near the beginning, in fact wished there'd been more "African stuff" in general. But this is a movie about white people and even with the best intentions and a Brazilian director, it's hard to exorcise that old "Tarzan" demon. Black people are still bit players on their own continent....

Favorite line (to the pregnant Weisz): "If I were your husband I'd tie you to the bed." Yeah, seriously, ladies, we don't expect you (and Junior within) to be Wonder Woman up until the water breaks; please, stay home, rest up and we'll go buy the cigars. (There I go again being the politically incorrect Grinch in Who-ville....)

Separate Lies (2005)

A quiet little treat....

[24 October 2005]

There's a line in T. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" that came to mind during "Separate Lies": "Let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be miraculous, or noteworthy, or noticeable." Those who are curious about this movie and are willing to seek it out (I had to do some driving to reach it) may come away feeling "there's nothing new here," and in fact the surface events are fairly mundane: in the aftermath of a fatal car accident a successful lawyer (sorry, "solicitor") discovers his wife's been unfaithful to him, then they and the other guy have to cope with the ramifications of the accident. But the trick to telling any story is to go at it as though it's never been done before. When seen with what the former TV comic Gallagher used to call "new eyes," then it becomes fresh and compelling. The eyes here are those of actor/writer/producer J. Fellowes making his directorial debut. His TV background is visible as his story follows a strict linear format (except for a few flashbacks) with an occasional voice-over filling in a few chronological leaps. "Then some months later, something happened that…"

The solicitor's played by Tom Wilkinson whose sturdy versatility was recently on display in "Batman Begins" (as a Gotham City gangster) and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" (as a priest of indeterminate nationality). His Mr. Manning could be described as "anal" but there's an essential decency there that makes him impossible to dislike, for me anyway. His wife is Emily Watson who's been working pretty steadily since "Breaking the Waves"; in the interests of full disclosure, I admit she's a kind of goddess to me so it's hard for me to critique a specific performance of hers. Her task here is to present Mrs. Manning as an amoral klutz but who's kindhearted and ultimately adorable. In my view she carries it off. I don't know the other performers but they're English, thus ipso facto competent professionals. The guy playing the other guy ("the villain of the piece," he wryly describes himself) makes a case for being the most sympathetic character; we could have the new George Sanders on our hands here.

Ultimately this movie is about civilized modern adult people making their peace with the sometimes nasty compromising of ideals that life bullyingly tends to request of us, or maybe demand. Americans may be disappointed there's not more of a "resolution"; nobody gets shot to death or goes to prison or is depicted going to hell, although a few scenes hint at Sartre's play "No Exit" with the three people stuck in a room together for eternity. Only one scene has physical violence with Mr. Manning briefly going off on the other guy along with some language that I suppose earned the movie it's "R" rating. (We don't get to see Emily with her clothes off, sorry to say.) The key scenes for me were Mr. Manning watching through a restaurant window his wife and the other guy clearly enjoying being together, then later going to visit his estranged wife in the rain just to tell her that he wants her memories of their time together to be happy, not sad. In the latter scene Wilkinson's eyes achieve the kind of heartbreaking inner light that seems to come naturally to Brits; watch Chaplin at the end of "City Lights," you'll see the best example I can think of. I'll confess it resonated for me even more due to a certain personal situation….

Just a few random points, not even quibbles: it didn't bother me that Wilkinson is old enough to be Watson's father; if anything that made the attractiveness of the other guy more buyable. I wasn't sure why some scenes took place in Paris except to show that Wilkinson speaks French well, but the place looked nice. (Ironic having a French hotel named after an English king.) Not sure why the inquisitive cop had to be black except to make him stand out more (he's the only black character); I only mention it because when the only minority character is also the most pious straight-arrow character, sometimes it comes off as "white overcompensation" but the Brits can make it smooth and seamless. When late in the going we learn that the other guy has cancer, I thought "Oh crap, a palpable plot device," but they steer well clear of sappy "Terms of Endearment" territory. The cancer in fact sets up the ending which for Americans may seem jarringly not-what-we-have-come-to-expect. Not a stupid premise-annihilating "twist" but rather what we maybe would have expected if most of our movies weren't so manufacturedly saccharine.

Bottom line, "Lies" is a quiet little treat but I can't recommend you drive as far as I did to see it. Maybe you'd even enjoy it more on TV but it's not exactly "Titanic," I can't envision HBO showing it a zillion times….

By the way each sunrise I see DOES seem miraculous….

A History of Violence (2005)

Okay, just for the record, Philadelphia's not Brooklyn....

[2 October 2005]

I blame Sylvester Stallone for the current misconception. Before "Rocky" the so-called City of Brotherly Love did not exist on film except if it was about our Revolution or, more recently, about the well-to-do "Main Line" region (e.g. "The Philadelphia Story"). Mr. Stallone put "blue collar" Philly on the movie map.... unfortunately with the wrong accent. He and his co-stars all talked like New Yawkas more or less. The Philly accent is descended from Irish and Cockney patois and is impossible to reproduce phonetically, especially the distinctive vowel sounds which would make "vowel sound" more like "val sand," but not quite. Brian De Palma (who's from the area) coached his then-wife Nancy Allen into doing one for "Blow Out"; it actually wasn't bad, except she only used it for about half her dialogue. You hear it from local extras hired for productions in the "Tri-State Region" and also Baltimore, which has basically the same accent only with more of a southern tinge. But you won't hear it from anyone in "A History of Violence." Just thought I'd mention it...

Anyway if you've seen the trailer, you know the story. Elements of "The Killers" and "Cape Fear" appear as an apparently ordinary guy running a diner in Indiana (played unobtrusively by director David Cronenberg's native Canada) has to cope with the arrival of two of the nastiest buckets of movie pus since "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." I haven't read the "graphic novel" on which this is based and it's unclear why we need to spend so much screen time with these maggots; just one glance would've confirmed for me that "they needed killin'." Then some more creepy guys show up to see the diner owner, etc.

Some interesting plot points are brought up but not delved into much. The diner owner gets pestered by the media for a while but then they vanish, even as ever more outlandish things happen to him. The smarter-than-he-appears local sheriff suspects our hero of being in the Witness Protection Program, then drops all such lines of inquiry. (In this era of computer records and the omnipresent Social Security Number, how DOES one cop a whole new identity, not just to steal from someone's credit card but to embark upon a whole new long-term existence? The hero merely remarks mysteriously that his new name "became available.") The hero's wife turns on a dime from loving to contemptuous with apparently not much curiosity how it all came about. The hero's son has issues with some bullying punks at his school but after he kicks the crap out of one of them (my favorite scene), that also is dropped. Mr. Cronenberg's early work ("Rabid," "The Brood," "Scanners," "Videodrome") was about the fleshing out (literally and gruesomely) of his own nightmarish visions but from "The Dead Zone" onwards he's mostly adapted others' source material, becoming a kind of demented William Wyler with an almost pornographic focus on imagery for it's own sake, whether it's wrecked cars in "Crash" or, here, acts of violence. It's all very matter-of-fact, no "lingering aftertaste." The performances all fit the mood except for William Hurt as the hero's long unseen gangster brother who with his Amish beard, bulging eyes, male-model attire and staccato line readings seems not only in his own movie but his own universe. It's hard to recall the promise he showed in "Body Heat," a young intelligent Everyman without the pretentious piety of a Kevin Costner.

To finish up where I began with the Philadelphiana, there's a nice moment late in the going when Viggo Mortensen buys a beer in a seedy dive and leaves his change on the bar; that's a distinct local trait, he must've done some homework. By the way I'm confused at some of the comments about Maria Bello "looking bad." Bearing in mind that we never see her at her job, I thought she and all the characters looked like real people in those circumstances. Whatever else one may think of Mr. Cronenberg's stuff, he always has his visuals down pat....

After that really painful-looking sex scene on the stairs, I wish the hero had asked his wife for a glass of "wood-er," as Philadelphians pronounce that word for some reason...