Traitor: Grade B

B
Traitor (2008)
Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jeff Daniels; Co-Writer & Director Jeffrey Nachmanoff.

You’ll need motion-sickness medication to watch this movie. The camera swoops, spins, tracks and zooms dizzyingly in every scene. Fast pans move from one close up shot to another so quickly you can hardly tell what you’re looking at and if you try to follow the motion your eyes will cross. The movements are completely gratuitous, seriously detracting from the film. When it is not swooping around, the camera is hand held, jumping and jittering wildly with the action but incomprehensibly, shot from no consistent point of view. This syntax of camera-as-character is common in television, but usually done more intelligently. But all is not lost, for in the last 1/3 of the film they apparently changed personnel and the movie settles down to a much more enjoyable, professional looking work. You just have to make it through the first hour.

And you should try, for this is basically a good movie. Don Cheadle is a deep undercover agent for the US Government, penetrating a terrorist organization based in Yemen. His undercover status is not revealed for the first 45 minutes, (although I guessed it right away -- he is Don Cheadle, after all), so we first get to know him as an explosives dealer who also instructs his customers in making bombs and suicide vests. Taghmaoui is the militant Islamic extremist who Cheadle befriends. To earn his bones, Cheadle must blow up an American embassy in Europe, which causes him a crisis of conscience, and we learn that his character really is a devout Muslim, not just an undercover pretender. Acting is consistently superb throughout. The dialog is intelligent and the story is engaging. However, sets, scenes and costumes are so self-consciously overdone that they are unconvincing. It is courageous of Cheadle to put his career at risk by playing an Islamic terrorist but he plays it extremely well, so much so that we can understand the point of view of the anti-American Islamic extremists. Despite its flaws, good acting and a good story make the move worth seeing.

Man on Wire: Grade B

B
Man on Wire (2008)
Philippe Petit. Director James Marsh

In 1974, Philippe Petit strung a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City then walked out into the void. He spent 45 minutes out there, a quarter mile above the traffic, dancing, twirling, showing off. It was a worldwide news incident, as intended. When he finally came in, police snatched him up. He was charged with trespassing.

This documentary tells the story with some background from his youth and reports on his earlier wire-walks between the towers of Notre Dame and the towers of a bridge in Sydney. The story is told in convincing reenactments, archival news footage, and interviews with Petit and the friends who helped him. The story is only slightly interesting, though photography, editing and directing are excellent. Philippe is charming, as is his French-accented English. I would have liked a lot more information about the technical and financial aspects of the stunt. How is the wire made and anchored? What kind of slippers does he wear? Where does he fix his eyes while walking? What does he think about? How is the balance pole used? Who paid for all the equipment and airline flights? None of these questions is addressed. What's left is a report of an inconsequential media stunt from three decades ago.

At first, I wondered what kind of a nut Petit was. He would have made an excellent terrorist. But in the DVD extra interview with him, I became convinced that he is a genuine performance artist, deranged only to the extent any great artist must be. It might have been a better film to frame it more clearly as an inquiry into the soul of an artist rather than as a news report. But it is an engaging worthwhile hour of viewing.

The Edge of Heaven: Grade A

A
The Edge of Heaven (2008)
Nurgül Yesilçay, Tuncel Kurtiz, Hanna Schygulla, Nursel Köse; Writer-director Fatih Akin. (German and Turkish; subtitled).

Turkish-born German director Akin tells of three families whose lives intersect in random ways, per the now formulaic Crash template. Much of the action and dialog takes place in Istanbul and in northeastern (Kurdish) Turkey. An old Turkish man (Kurtiz) in Germany invites a Turkish prostitute (Yesilcay) to quit the business and move in with him. His son is a German professor of Turkish studies, who goes to Turkey to search for the woman’s adult daughter. Meanwhile, the daughter (Kose), a Kurdish activist hunted by police, goes to Bremen to search for her mother. Those two characters cross paths but never meet, though we badly want them to. The daughter befriends a female college student in Bremen and they become lovers. When tragedy befalls them, the student’s mother (Schygulla) travels to Turkey. There her path crosses that of the now-deported old Turk who had befriended the prostitute, but they never meet. The story just ends when the time is up. There is no resolution and it is frustrating, until you realize that in real life, no bell rings to mark “resolution.” We each live in a bubble, trying to make sense of our own lives. As the viewer we have an omniscient, God’s – eye view of how these six lives interact over time, culture, and geography, yet we are forced to settle for the tunnel vision of a mere mortal. It is a contradiction.

The cinematographer prefers high contrast lighting with bright, contrasting colors, especially red and white. It’s a sharp look, very pleasing even in scenes of urban squalor. Acting is marvelous, especially by Köse, who dominates the screen. Apparently she is a big star in Turkey but unknown (until now) outside the country. Schygulla has a smaller role but she still has the magic of her youth. Just asking for a cup of coffee, she rivets your attention. The directing does not draw attention to itself but the writing does. For supposedly ordinary people living ordinary lives, too many low probability events occur and when those tales are not concluded, we wonder what the point was. So in the end, the movie is not quite satisfying, but the beautiful pictures, fine acting, and fascinating languages and cultures more than make up for any deficit in story.

The Match Factory Girl: Grade A

A
The Match Factory Girl (1990/2008)
Kati Outinen. Writer and Director Aki Kaurismäki. (Finnish, subtitled).

This new release of the classic 1990 film is a masterpiece of minimalism. A poor, urban young woman works in a factory that produces wooden matches. She gives her meager salary to her exploitative mother and ugly stepfather. There is virtually no dialog in the movie, few utterances of any kind. It's almost a silent movie, and eerie because of that. All the feelings and conflicts are illustrated visually, in a masterful use of the medium.

The woman is not depressive, despite palpably depressing surroundings, but she is withdrawn; not shy but with nothing to say. She plods through life without complaint, like the worn, functional machinery in the match factory. In an uncharacteristic one-night stand, she becomes pregnant. The baby’s well-to-do father rejects her and her parents throw her out of the apartment. Alone and defeated, she executes a childish revenge on the paternity offender and on her parents. It is a stupid plan and she is quickly caught by the police. What is striking is the woman’s flat, mechanical dullness. She is not unintelligent, but unknowingly oppressed by poverty, lack of opportunity and lack of imagination. In her vengeance she is not enraged but matter-of-fact. The effect is haunting.

This is the third in the director’s “Proletariat” trilogy, the only one I have seen. This release is an “Eclipse” edition, a line of classics like the Criterion Collection. Eclipse offers high quality versions of hard to find films like this one, at low cost, without the remastering and supplementary material of Criterion. I am grateful for Eclipse, because without it, this wonderful glimpse into the life and mind of lower class Helsinki would have never come my way.

The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour : Grade B

B
The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (2007)
Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, Aron Kader, Dean Obeidallah. Director Michael Simon.

Four Middle-Eastern stand-up comics talk about the immigrant experience. Each enters the stage through a mock metal detector and is scrutinized by a TSA employee, then does a 15 minute routine. There is no interaction among the performers. The stand-up acts are well-rehearsed and high quality. Many jokes are anecdotes about the average American’s ignorance of Middle Eastern history and culture (“Oh, you’re Arab? I love hummous!”). There are predictable jokes about Middle-Eastern accents, police profiling, TSA profiling, the Patriot Act, hijacking airplanes and Bin Laden. Many jokes seem manufactured, not flowing out of the comics’ personal experience, but that’s ok because these topics need to be brought out in the open and laughed at. The four acts effectively defuse a lot of subterranean cultural anxiety. My favorite part was watching the mostly Middle-Eastern audience squirming in their seats with a mixture of appreciation and embarrassment. The jokes were all political, social and ethnic, with not a single reference to body functions (refreshingly), and virtually no jokes about history, romantic or domestic relationships, pets, children, television shows, sex, drugs, rednecks, and all the usual topics that stand-ups cover. It was a self-consciously focused presentation on Middle Eastern stereotypy, ethnicity, and prejudice, and its purpose was obviously to send a message to the mainstream: Middle-Easterners are people too! The show succeeds at delivering that message, and also simply as a LOL hour of enjoyment.

Tropic Thunder: Grade C

C
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., with appearances by Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise. Co-writer and Director Ben Stiller.

This satire of Vietnam war films takes a self-referential, postmodern approach, meaning that its own satire is part of the joke, making it also a satire of Hollywod filmmaking. A patrol of GIs is filming battle scenes (shot in Hawaii, which had to be expensive), but the actors are bickering and one multi-million dollar special effects explosion is ignited when the cameras are not even rolling. In desperation, the director drops the patrol into the jungle to see if they can straighten out their relationships while trying to survive. Somehow they are dropped straight into the Vietnam war and are attacked by guerrillas. But they think they are still making a movie and act accordingly. That goofy premise makes for some delicious inside-Hollywood laughs and some good parodies of well-known scenes from Rambo, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Rescue Dawn, and others.

One of the funniest bits is between RDJ playing a tough, barking black sergeant, and a young, hip black soldier who is perplexed by his stereotypical phrases and attitudes. There is no real plot, just a series of gag scenes, so everything depends on the humor, which is inconsistent. It loses its satiric edge and degenerates into crude, easy laughs as the movie progresses, until finally it becomes flat and boring. Jack Black has his fans, but is too crude and hammy for me. Nolte does a great self-parody. Cruise comes across as creepy; the magic is gone from him. Directing is notably good, and the sets, props, costumes and production values are high quality, but after about 45 minutes, the movie has little content to keep you going.

The White Lioness: Grade B

B
The White Lioness (1996)
Rolf Lassgard, Basil Appollis, Dipuo Huma. Director Per Berglund. (Swedish; mostly English, with subtitled Swedish, Norwegian and Afrikaans).

I picked this one from the stacks because I remembered having read the book years ago. I didn’t even know it was ever made into a movie, but the book was terrific. This movie is pretty good too; I give it only a B because I was disappointed by the movie’s extreme compression of the book’s rich and complex characters, but I guess that’s how movies are made.

The movie is set at the time when Mandela and De Klerk shared a Nobel peace prize for bringing an end to apartheid. A group of reactionary white Afrikaners are afraid of the coming cultural and governmental change and plot a high level assassination. They hire a young black killer to do the job. The assassin and his keeper train in a small town in Sweden, where they incidentally kill a snoopy woman. The small town police detective finds the body but is perplexed. Very slowly, tiny clues begin to emerge and he eventually follows the trail to Cape Town. The scenery is beautiful and it makes me realize how seldom we see South Africa in movies. Without giving too much away, the plot is thwarted in the nick of time. The story is so compressed that it is difficult to follow, but logically tight if you pay attention. Acting is superb and so is the directing. Locations are wonderful to see. Very worthwhile.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold: Grade A

A
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (2008)
Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner; Director Martin Ritt.

This “Criterion” release of the 1965 Le Carre film adaptation is a feast for the eyes. The film is perfectly restored, and black and white has never looked so good. It is stunningly beautiful and perfectly suited to the film noir genre and to the cold war 1960’s. Burton is very good in this role, but I think he was overrated. His acting seems flat and manufactured to me, although some of that is the character portrayed, and some of it legacy of the stage. Claire Bloom does a good job but Oskar Werner’s performance is riveting. For fans of Le Carre, this is a perfect adaptation. It captures the tension, the emotions, and the moral ambiguities of the novel and of that period of history. British spy Leamus (Burton) is supposed to act like a defector to give the East Germans some misinformation in Amsterdam. But they whisk him off to East Berlin and he learns that the British have abandoned him, so he now really is the traitor he was pretending to be. I love the way Le Carre can turn the world inside out like that.

There is a second disk in this edition showing a long, recent interview with Le Carre in which he discusses the making of the film, working with Burton and Ritt; all fascinating stuff, especially where it highlights the different points of view of a writer and a filmmaker. Then there is longish feature which is Le Carre’s autobiography told through film adaptations of his novels, focusing of course on the autobiographical, A Perfect Spy. It seems he has been self-aware all his life (the hindsight of age encourages that view), and exquisitely attuned to subtleties of the human condition. Then there is an extensive 1967 interview with Burton, who is fascinating and disturbing. And much more. Even if you have seen the original movie more than once, this Criterion edition is well worth renting.

Sukiyaki Western Django: Grade A

A
Sukiyaki Western Django
Hideaki Ito. Masanobu Ando, Koichi Sato, Kaori Momoi, Quentin Tarantino; Co-writer & Director: Takashi Miike. (Japanese, mostly in English, some dubbed).

This is a tongue-in-cheek remake and homage to the Leone/Eastwood 1964 classic spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars. A nameless gunman bids his services to two rival gangs competing for hidden gold, as in the original. Innumerable fistfights and gunfights ensue. But instead of a dry, dusty town in the American west, these scenes take place in a wet, muddy town in rural Japan. There is a fascinating mix of 19th century Japanese and Southwestern US architecture and culture. Curly-eaved, lacquered classical Japanese buildings sit alongside clapboard saloons and liveries. The Japanese saloon is especially fun. It looks mostly like a ryokan, with shoji windows and wooden barrels for stools but there is a huge set of Texas longhorns mounted over the bar. The swinging saloon doors have Asian scrimshaw instead of louvers. Several times I had to pause the DVD to admire the creativity and wit that went into set design. Costumes are the same way. And above all, the filmmakers got the two things right that you must get right in a spaghetti, the colors and the sound of the gunshots. Both were perfect.

While the story line was very close to complete nonsense, the acting was engaging and the dialog witty. Directing is strong, cinematography exceptional, and the scenery beautiful. Tarantino’s small part at the beginning sets you up for satire, but the film takes itself pretty seriously overall. There are references to the samurai tradition, and visual allusions to Kurosawa. I am probably overrating the film because I am such a fan of satire, the spaghetti genre, Japanese film, and Tarantino, so this was a delight for me.

Wall-E: Grade B

B
Wall-E
Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin; Co-writer and director: Andrew Stanton. (Animated).

Wall-E is a beat-up, post-apocalyptic robot trash compactor on a desolate earth. The apocalypse was not the customary sci-fi nuclear holocaust or biological plague, but an environmental tragedy: the planet overwhelmed by trash. In Wall-E’s world there are piles of trash as high as skyscrapers (most of it seems to be scrap metal), no living things except a solitary cockroach, and a desolate desert landscape plagued by fierce duststorms. However, electricity is still plentiful, advertisements play from loudspeakers and illuminated billboards offer fast food. Hey, it’s a kid’s movie.

All the humans took spaceships to a distant mother ship, Axiom, where they have lived in spotless luxury and hi-tech comfort for 700 years. Of course they have all turned into shapeless whales gliding on hovercraft chairs as they slurp their 32 ounce sodas. They are surrounded by fast food advertising of a generic nature, but which is colored yellow and red to give the unmistakable impression of McDonald’s.

The mother ship sends out a robotic probe to Earth. The probe is a sleek, white, jet- and laser- powered, egg-shape named Eva. Eva was obviously designed by the people who did the iPod, whereas Wall-E was designed way back in the 21st century by a tractor company. Inevitably, the two robots develop a romance, and that is the heart of the story. Wall-E stows away on the shuttlecraft when Eva returns to Axiom, and Star-Trekian onboard adventures ensue as the humans are awakened to their senses and motivated to return to Earth.

The animation is out of this world, as we have come to expect from Pixar. They have no peer for technical skill or animation creativity. I was amazed at how a wide range of simple yet effective emotions were projected from a couple of robots with minimal human features. They have no eyebrows, not even noses or mouths, and hardly any language, and yet somehow, the two robots are anthropomorphically alive. It’s brilliant.

The Romeo and Juliet emotional caricatures and the heavy-handed eco-message are too simple minded for most adults. But there is a layer of inventiveness, humor, and allusion that will keep you engaged. There is also another thematic layer to consider. Wall-E and Eva, despite being robots, are clearly the characters we identify with, whereas the blimped-out humans are robotic. There is a satirical concern about our technologically-driven society, nostalgic longing for a fanciful agrarian past, and anxiety about the future of humanity.

Disney distributes Pixar, so it is noteworthy that the usual invidious gender stereotypes are largely missing from this movie. Wall-E and Eva have no sexual characteristics (other than their names) and do not behave in stereotypically gendered ways. That is a very large step forward for a children’s movie and I applaud it.

Four Minutes: Grade A

A
Four Minutes (2008)
Monica Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung; Writer-Director Chris Kraus. (German, subtitled).

An old, stoop-shouldered, gray-haired, cardigan-wearing woman (Bleibtreu) gives piano lessons to women prisoners in contemporary Germany (although the prison looks dated to the 1920s to 1940s). One day a wild, angry murderer enters the prison population, a young woman who nevertheless has considerable musical talent and experience on the piano (Herzsprung). The old teacher is delighted and convinces the girl to try to win a forthcoming competition. Many problems are encountered and overcome, including the girl’s preference for loud contemporary sounds (“Negro music” as the teacher disparages it), instead of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, upon which the teacher insists.

The music is beautiful throughout and I wanted to hear more of it, but the heart of the story is really the relationship between the old woman and the girl, and what each has to teach the other about life. As the story progresses, bits and pieces of their former lives are revealed, enriching the film and their relationship. The final scene (the big prize concert) is a knockout, and not what you probably expected. The writing is original and the directing noticeably deft.

There was one obvious error in the story, having the young woman’s hands burned but miraculously recovered the next day. I did not care for the art design, with its opressive green filter. Yes, it made the inside of the prison look depressing but it was overdone to the point of being intrusive and unrealistic. Acting by both women was superb, but especially by Herzsprung, who should be catapulted to international stardom with this performance.

Shut Up and Shoot Me: Grade B

B
Shut Up and Shoot Me (2008)
Karel Roden, Andy Nyman, Anna Geislerová. Writer-Director Steen Agro. (U.K. and Czech Republic, in English).

An English couple are tourists in Prague when the wife is killed in an accident. The husband (Nyman) decides he cannot live without her so hires his Czech driver (Roden) to kill him. But the scheme goes wrong, not once, multiple times. One is reminded of a Roadrunner cartoon as sillier and sillier situations unfold. What makes the story funny is the deadpan tone in which the lines are delivered in absurd situations. Nyman offers to pay for his execution with his credit card. The driver is outraged. “If this card is empty, I’ll kill you!” “Yes, that will be fine.” One misadventure leads to another even more improbable, until the whole movie just stops when the time is up.

The dialog is funny and the lines are well delivered, but no serious relationships develop among the characters. The story is not realistic, but not fantastic either; just plausible enough to make the deadpan humor work. For example, my wife cringed when a bad guy shot a woman’s shopping bags full of Prada, Ferragamo, and other high end goods. Seeing Prague in winter was enjoyable. Camera work was noticeably good, both with the outdoor scenery and in tight indoor shots. This is a lightweight, mindless comedy for adults, but a cut above average.

Red: Grade B

B
Red (2008)
Brian Cox, Tom Sizemore. Co-directors Trygve Allister Diesen
Lucky McKee.

It is a pleasure to see Brian Cox in a leading role like this. He was a standout actor (about the only one) in The Bourne Supremacy. Here he plays a taciturn gentleman retired to his country home in western Oregon, living more or less in seclusion. He wears a bulky, plaid cloth jacket and a wide-brim cowboy hat, moves slowly and drives a beat up, 20 year old pickup. While fishing at the river one day, with his old dog, Red, he is robbed by three hoodlum youths. He has no money, so in frustration, the nutty kid shoots his dog dead. The boys get away, and from there, a tale of revenge develops.

The old man wants the boys to apologize because the way he construes the world, that's how things should work. He tracks down the ringleader and speaks to his rich, arrogant father (Sizemore), who dismisses the old man’s entreaty. Slowly and methodically, the old man finds each of the boys and talks to him, with little result except to increase tension. The tension grows palpably with each additional encounter until there is a completely out-of-character, unmotivated, and not-believable bloody gunfight ending that spoils the whole story.

Obviously, the producers were not comfortable with the slow pace of inner development, so grabbed for an easy “fix”. But the best payback is not death. It is the opponent’s own self-destruction or self-torture. Or alternately, the old man could have come to the conclusion that some people are immune to moral argument, and realized that his social construction of reality was wrong. Or, there are numerous occasions where he could have used the law to pursue the opponents, with assault charges, for example. Despite the ruinous turn of the plot however, acting by Cox and Sizemore are worth seeing and the characterizations are above average in the first half of the film.

Antibodies: Grade B

B
Antibodies (2005)
Wotan Wilke Möhring, André Hennicke, Hauke Diekamp. Writer-director Christian Alvart. (German, subtitled).

This update of Silence of the Lambs adds a religious ambiguity to the investigator but does not break new ground. Maybe we are just burned out on the serial killer theme, or maybe nobody can ever top Anthony Hopkins for emanating sheer pathological menace.

Möhring is the killer, captured by police in a riveting short scene before the titles, perhaps one of the best scenes in the movie. In prison, he won’t speak. A country policeman (Hennicke) interviews him in connection with a missing child in his town, and the killer suddenly starts speaking in cryptic riddles with the intention of messing with his mind, as Hopkins did with Foster. The policeman becomes obsessed with ascertaining whether this prisoner is the killer of the girl in his town. The killer claims she was dead when he got there, but he saw the real killer. He drops enough clues that the policeman begins to suspect his own son (Kiekamp). The thought drives the policeman nearly mad from religious guilt and a heavy-handed Biblical theme of Abraham and Isaac is played out. That could have been a good theme for recasting the whole story, but it is just thrown in at the end.

The directing and cinematography, though often bloody and violent, are outstanding and raise the film above average. Acting is only average though. The imprisoned killer is intelligent but also just batty, covering his cell walls with slogans and crude drawings of mutilation. Möhring does not have the stillness Hopkins used to convey menace. Policeman Hennicke is distractingly histrionic. The story sags badly while he discovers his shadow side amidst much breast-beating angst. There are a few late-breaking surprises that are just too clever, and the happy ending contradicts the film's noirish mood.

Youth Without Youth: Grade C

C
Youth Without Youth (2007)
Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara. Writer-Director Francis Ford Coppola.

No film by Coppola should be missed, but this is an example of what happens when one person is producer, director and screenplay writer: there is no pushback and the project becomes solipsistic. The cinematography is beautiful and recognizably Coppola’s, especially that late afternoon Italian sunlight casting a slanting yellow glow over buildings, people, landscape. The musical leitmotifs are likewise reminiscent of the Godfather series. But in this film, Coppola channels his inner David Lynch to express something about lost youth, the inevitable diminutions of aging, and a vague hope of everlasting life. None of it makes any sense. Turn the sound off and look at the beautiful photography.

Tim Roth would win best performance in a totally enigmatic role. He is a washed-up, 70 year old professor in 1938 Bucharest who is struck by lightning one day in front of a medieval church. That is the most unexpected and shocking scene in the film. It evokes more than lightning; it is somehow a divine intervention into human life. To the amazement of doctors, he does not die, but even more amazing, recovers as a 40 year old man. The story possibilities at this point are endlessly intriguing, but instead all semblance of story is given up. Inexplicably, the old-young man now has paranormal powers, such as clairvoyance, telekinesis, hypermnesia, and the ability to speak, read, and write just about any language in the world, past or present. Cool! He also suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called split personality) so he can have deep conversations with himself. There are some neat visual shots with mirrors portraying that idea.

He meets a young woman (Lara) but somehow she is transformed into his Picture of Dorian Gray. As she suddenly ages (with some gray hair and not-too-convincing makeup), she also regresses to her former life as a cave-dwelling spiritual seeker of centuries ago in India. Hey, it could happen to anyone! Fortunately, Roth speaks Sanskrit, so they can talk about it. Lucky break there.

Meanwhile Nazis want to capture Roth to possess “his secret” whatever that might be, so he flees Romania, and I can’t remember what happens next but it doesn’t matter. In the end, he dies, and the girl becomes young again, with no memory of her cave dwelling life.

Can any meaning be inferred from all this incoherent nonsense? It does seem to express Coppola’s intuition (I am guessing), which is something like, “Dammit, I can’t be 70 years old already! There must be more to the human condition than just living, eating, sleeping and dying!” So in the film he explores some possibilities that defy aging, defy the limits of one person’s knowledge, but ultimately he accepts death. If I am not reading too much into it then, the film at least gestures at an existential protest.

My Blueberry Nights: Grade A

A
My Blueberry Nights (2007)
Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz; Co-Writer and Director Kar Wai Wong.

A jilted young woman (Jones) travels around the U.S. to get over her loss and get in touch with herself, but before she goes, she happens in at Jude Law’s café where he serves her blueberry pie and they talk about love and life. In her subsequent year-long road trip, she sends him a stream of postcards. Along the way, she meets Strathairn as a drunken cop in a bar where she works nights, and encounters his estranged wife, Weisz. She meets high-stakes poker player Portman in Nevada and rides to Vegas with her. Finally Jones returns to New York and Law’s cafe, realizing that love is closer than you think.

The movie is as sweet as blueberry pie; utterly charming, leaving you feeling good. The acting is spectacular throughout, even by Jones, who also narrates and sings on the sound track. Strathairn is as good or better than he was in the 2006 Sensation of Sight. Weisz seethes with a Tennesee Williams intensity, much more passionate than her usual controlled, intellectual roles. Portman plays a character older than I would have expected and jumps from the screen with exuberance. This many big names in a movie is usually the kiss of death, but everybody puts out 100%, a tribute to Wong’s directing as much as the actors’ talents.

Cinematography is so good you could print any frame and hang it in an art gallery. There are some amazing shots, such seeing the character through a long lens, through the lettering on a shop window. Colors are fantastic. The long speech by Weisz at a nighttime bus stop seems to be done all in one take and is nothing short of courageous. There is a small amount of CGI, used artistically and perfectly. Even the editing is creative. The sound track is wonderful, with Jones singing softly, but also with original work by Ry Cooder. This is moviemaking at its best. The only criticism is that the storyline is weak to non-existent and the pace is slow. I was never bored, but this film cannot go up against a superhero flick. It’s all about the characters and their relationships, not some contrived plot.

Shine a Light: Grade B

B
Shine a Light (2008)
Rolling Stones; Martin Scorcese. Director Martin Scorcese

As concert films go, this one is cinematically excellent. It captures the Stones on their “Bigger Bang” tour and displays the Stones’ shtick. If you’re a Stones fan, you’ll like the music. I found it disappointing. Mick and the boys simply do not have the vocal talent of long-ago youth. Tunes are highly compressed in tonal range, the voices used more as rhythm instruments now. The music is a mere shadow of its former greatness. Mick struts and prances with elbows above his shoulders, pretty amazing for a 60 year old dude. But what lifts the film above average is the beautiful photography, directing, and editing. It demonstrates again that Scorcese is a master. Comparisons to The Last Waltz (1978) are inevitable. This one doesn’t even come close in terms of musical content and entertainment value. This is about Scorcese and his extremely high level of skill in making a concert film. The content is merely so-so.

The Visitor: Grade A

A
The Visitor (2008)
Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbas; Writer-Director Thomas McCarthy.

An aging, burned out economics professor (Jenkins) leaves his home in Connecticut to visit his apartment in New York City. He finds a young couple (Sleiman and Gurira) living there illegally. The young man is an aspiring musician from Syria, a player of African drums, while she makes and sells beadwork of her native Senegal on the street. The professor politely asks them to leave and they politely leave, but he realizes they will be destitute and invites them back to share his (amazingly spacious) apartment for a while. Relationships are awkward but he develops a friendship with the young man, but alas, the ICE (immigration authorities) capture the young man. His mother (Abbas) appears at the professor’s door and the movie shifts to the slowly developing relationship between the professor and the mother as they try to get her son out of prison.

The acting by these four principal characters is nothing short of phenomenal. They are all utterly compelling, but Jenkins’ performance is astonishing. He says in a DVD interview, “I have been waiting all my professional life for this role.” It makes you wonder why he had to wait. Abbas also gives an outstanding performance, as does the director in portraying the quiet yet deep relationship that develops between the two older adults. The first half of the picture features the exuberance of the younger couple and conveys the multicultural world that is modern New York. The city is a star character in its own right, lovingly portrayed and beautifully photographed to unite the two halves of the movie. Writing and dialog seem authentic. I didn’t notice a single cliché in dialog, characterization, or photography.

This movie has the slow pace and subtle emotions of a serious foreign film. There are no guns, no drugs, no explosions, no sex, no violence, no stereotypes. It will not please most American moviegoers, but for the few who do enjoy a deeply meaningful study of modern human lives in development, it will be very rewarding.

War, Inc.: Grade A

A
War, Inc. (2008)
John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Dan Ackroyd, Ben Kingsley. Director Joshua Seftel.

In the “future,” a huge military contractor, a thinly disguised Halliburton, occupies a middle eastern country, Turaqistan (get it?). The CEO, played very vice-presidentially by Ackroyd, hires John Cusack, a professional assassin, to take out a certain oil minister. The assassin’s cover is as the head of the corporation’s enormous trade show, organized by his assistant, sister Joan. Meanwhile, Tomei is a dogged investigative reporter who smells scandal. Kingsley has a small but funny part as some kind of evil bad guy, and Duff has an equally wild part as a bizarre sex-crazed belly dancer. It is all just madcap fun as those hilarious car bombs blow up all around.

The dialog is funny and the satire is often sharp, but this is not laugh-a-minute. Serious issues are raised about violence, torture, the commercialization of war, political corruption, American imperialism, and so on. But nobody wants to see a moralizing anti-war movie, so those serious moments are short and sandwiched between thick slices of silly nonsense, with plenty of crude jokes for the youngsters, sophisticated film allusions, and subtle wordplay. You might take it as a throwaway comedy and you wouldn’t be far wrong, except for the very serious political themes just under the veneer of the satire. Even though it is not a grade A comedy nor a grade A thriller, the artistic value of what this movie attempts to do makes it a must-see.

Both Cusacks are great; can’t get enough of them. John is a good comic actor with just the right tone of pseudo-seriousness. Tomei is fascinating no matter what kind of a role. The politically aware audience will detect a left-leaning bias, but the genuinely funny comedy should overcome political annoyance.

Boy A: Grade C

C
Boy A (2008)
Andrew Garfield, Alfie Owen, Peter Mullan, Taylor Doherty. Director John Crowley.

A young man (Garfield) is released from prison after a childhood murder he participated in (played by Owen), with his violent childhood friend (Doherty), now dead. His social worker (Mullan) helps him get a job in a warehouse in a different city, with a new name, to start life fresh. He is successful and although extremely shy, makes friends and even develops a female romantic relationship. Inevitably though, his past leaks out and his new world crumbles when everyone rejects him. The strength of the movie is the very strong acting, especially by Garfield, who is a completely sympathetic character, and that’s what makes the tragic ending so poignant. The main weakness is the way the backstory is revealed to us in small flashbacks in an attempt to create artificial mystery where there really is none. That is a cheesy technique you would see on television. All it does is make the main character uninterpretable until we have enough background information, which is late in the movie. That could have worked to make us have the point of view of his contemporaries and then experience the change in attitude when we learn the truth about him, but the flashbacks are fragmentary and ambiguous and actually seem to exonerate him.

The working class British and Scottish accents are a bit thick for American ears, and many lines are mumbled and slurred, so it is a challenge to track the dialog. Overall then, this is a mundane though tragic tale, badly told, but well acted.

OSS 117: Grade C

C
OSS 117 (2008)
Jean Dujardin, Bernice Bejo. Director Michel Hazanavicius. (French, subtitled)

I appreciate French culture and I can see how this movie would be hilarious to a French audience, but for me, it was a not-so-funny spoof of 1950’s spy movies, as made by Hitchcock, for example, starring Cary Grant. It has the suave, debonair, Bond-like spy (Dujardin) who drives an exotic sports car while fake scenery flows past. Seated beside him is the exotic woman in a silk head scarf (Bejo). He is a French secret agent sent to Cairo to find out who stole a big arms shipment. His cover is to run a poultry company because, as we know, chickens are universally funny. What probably tickles the French audience is the spy’s Clouseau-like clumsiness and incompetence, and especially his social and cultural faux-pas. He evaluates a Muslim religious practice with the comment, “Hmm. What a strange religion. It will never last.” He beats up a muezzin for making a racket at dawn when he is trying to sleep, thinking the poor fellow is just a local rowdy. Toward the end, the movie abandons sophisticated cultural humor and goes for a bizarre showdown with a Nazi organization holed up under a pyramid. The film is a competent spoof, playfully acted and moderately funny, but I think it works better if you are French.

Iron Man: Grade B

B
Iron Man (2008)
Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard, Jeff Bridges. Director Jon Favreau.

The wealthy, irresponsible head of a weapons company (Downey), invents a suit of armor with rockets that enable him to fly (jet around, really). It is also outfitted with flame throwers, RPG's, and other weapons. With this suit he vows to “fight evil,” as anybody would, of course.

The first evil he identifies is a Middle Eastern tribe that uses his company’s weapons. How that makes them evil is unclear, although there is a background report that they have killed women and children (just as American forces have done). Nevertheless, the evil Arabs are dispatched with flame throwers and explosions, which emotionally wipes out the hero's dissolute past so he can now concentrate on being a do-gooder.

Iron Man’s second evil adversary is an executive of his own weapons company, Jeff Bridges, who wears a bad bald cap that makes his head look like Dr. Phil’s, though his sleazy character reminded me more of Steve Ballmer. He develops a rival iron man suit so we can have a Manichean showdown. The plot is recycled stuff, but it is from a comic book, so what do you expect. The CGI effects are pretty good and fun to watch, but the gizmos are not as imaginative as those used by Batman or Spiderman.

The strength of the movie is RDJ’s acting which is wonderful, as is the performance of his personal assistant, Paltrow. The relationship between the two comes through – romantic but coy, as it was between 007 and Miss Moneypenny. The script is strong, with droll humor to keep adults engaged. There are plenty of visual allusions to other action pictures, including the Incredible Hulk, Batman, Spiderman, Robocop, The Terminator, and even Mission Impossible, but I don’t know what the point of those references is except to invite comparison, which is risky. This is a good introduction to Iron Man, who will definitely be back.

Leatherheads: Grade F

F
Leatherheads (2008)
George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski; Director George Clooney.

The three principal actors attracted me to this movie, but even their combined charms did not redeem the rambling, 2 hour and 45 minute tale of professional football in the 1920’s. Clooney seems too old to be galavanting about as a professional football player. Krasinski (“Jim” from The Office) always seems ironic, even when he’s not supposed to be. Zellweger might have had some bad face work. She is stiff and not her formerly expressive self. Clooney hires superstar Krasinski from college football into the pros on the hope of reviving his failing pro team. Zellweger is a reporter sent to shoot down Krasinski’s star by trolling for dirt, which she finds during an improbable quasi-romantic moment.

Dialog is rapid-fire snappy lines and comebacks, which are childishly smart-alecky rather than funny. They may have been trying for the tone of the old screwball comedies, but they did not even achieve cleverness. The comedic scene with Clooney and Zellweger in the train’s sleeper car was so painfully corny I winced. The palette of the film is relentlessly sepia, which was pleasing at first, but became intrusive with its orange walls, walnut furniture, blonde hair, brown grass, yellow lighting, tweed costumes, brown leather, brown mud, red streets, dark interiors, etc. Was this tedious near-monochromaticity Clooney’s attempt to recapture the tone of O Brother Where Art Thou? Story realism dooms that approach here.

The film crawls toward the mandatory “big game” ending, at which nothing in particular is at stake, but the crowd goes wild, and that’s all that matters, apparently. I can’t even discern what goal the filmmakers were trying to achieve with this project, but whatever it was, no points go on the scoreboard.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Grade B

B
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Jason Segel, Kristin Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, with Jonah Hill. Director Nicholas Stoller.

A Hollywood musician (Segel) is dumped by his TV star girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Bell) and decides to go to Hawaii to forget his grief. There he meets hotel clerk Kunis, but alas, his ex is also at the same hotel with her new boyfriend, a British pop star (Brand). Comedy ensues as Segel tries to get over Sarah and establish a relationship with Kunis, while being jealous of Bell and Brand.

The greatest flaw in this movie is its three hour length, which is inexcusable and unnecessary. Whole characters could have been eliminated without loss, such as Segel’s brother, and the sexually dysfunctional Mormon couple, just to name a few. There is no real story, just endless situations setting up sexual and relationship gags, so there would seem to be no constraint on what could be edited. The second problem is that the characters are all two-dimensional stereotypes and it is hard to care about any of them.

However the acting is just terrific, from all characters except Segel, who is fairly wooden, (not including his penis, which is shown several times). The other three principals are entrancing and kept me glued to the screen. Brand does a terrific over the top, self-obsessed character with inherently funny diction and good physical acting. Kunis is also mesmerizing, despite a lip job that makes her look like Michelle Pfeiffer. The dialog is quite witty and keeps you strung along even though the characters themselves are unimaginative. These virtues overcome the film’s length, languid pace and boring story.

Superhero Movie: Grade B

B
Superhero Movie (2008)
Drake Bell, Sarah Paxton, with Leslie Nielsen and Tracy Morgan. Writer & Director Craig Mazin.

This spoof of the superhero movies has tons of laughs, most of them broad and obvious. The opening sequence, in which the young protagonist Bell gets banged on the head and knocked down three times in quick succession, fairly sets the tone. Still, if you like slapstick, and I do, you have to admit that these stunts were done perfectly.

Bell is bitten by a radioactive dragonfly and acquires super powers. The Spider Man references are played to the hilt, but there are also good spoofs of Batman, Superman, some of the X-men, and even Mission Impossible and that scene in The Firm, where Tom Cruise hides on the ceiling, dripping sweat as Gene Hackman hunts him just below. Of course, in puerile form, it’s not sweat but another bodily fluid in this parody. My favorite joke was the dragonfly explaining what he was doing on a rooftop. “Why I’m just perching here on this gargoyle, gazing meaningfully out over the city,” he answers, as if that were the standard and customary behavior of a superhero, which it was, for Batman and Spider Man at least. This film is not as funny as The Naked Gun or Scary Movie, but good writing makes it just a cut above average.